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AUTHOR: 


SANTAYANA,  GEORGE 


TITLE: 


EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN 
PHILOSOPHY 

PLACE: 

LONDON  &  TORONTO 

DA  TE : 

[1916] 


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Egotism  in  German  philosophy,  bv  G 

M,  Dent  &  Sons  Limited;  New  York   r 
Scribner's  Sons  (1916  J        »orK,  c. 
1/1  p.   20  cm. 


1.  Egoism.   2.  Philosophy.  G.rm.n 


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EGOTISM   IN   GERMAN 
PHILOSOPHY 


AU  rights  reserved 


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EGOTISM 


IN 


GERMAN    PHILOSOPHY 


BY 


G.   SANTAYANA 

LATE    PROFESSOR   OF   PHILOSOPHY    IN    HARVARD    UNIVERSITV 


LONDON  AND  TORONTO 

J.    M.    DENT   &    SONS    LIMITED 
NEW  YORK:    CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


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PREFACE 

This  book  is  one  of  the  many  that  the  present  war 
has  brought  forth,  but  it  is  the  fruit  of  a  long 
gestation.  During  more  than  twenty  years,  while  I 
taught  philosophy  at  Harvard  College,  I  had  con- 
tinual occasion  to  read  and  discuss  German  meta« 
physics.  From  the  beginning  it  wore  in  my  eyes  a 
rather  questionable  shape.  Under  its  obscure  and 
fluctuating  tenets  I  felt  something  sinister  at  work, 
something  at  once  hollow  and  aggressive.  It  seemed 
a  forced  method  of  speculation,  producing  more  con- 
fusion than  it  found,  and  calculated  chiefly  to  enable 
practical  materialists  to  call  themselves  idealists  and 
rationaUsts  to  remain  theologians.  At  the  same  time 
the  fear  that  its  secret  might  be  eluding  me,  seeing 
that  by  blood  and  tradition  I  was  perhaps  handi- 
capped in  the  matter,  spurred  me  to  great  and  pro- 
longed efforts  to  understand  what  confronted  me  so 
bewilderingly.  I  wished  to  be  as  clear  and  just  about 
it  as  I  could — ^more  clear  and  just,  indeed,  than  it 
ever  was  about  itself. 

For  the  rest,  German  philosophy  was  never  my 
chief  interest,  and  I  write  frankly  as  an  outsider,  with 
no  professorial  pretensions ;  merely  using  my  common 


6       EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


reason  in  the  presence  of  claims  put  forth  by  others 
to  a  logical  authority  and  a  spiritual  supremacy 
which  they  are  far  from  possessing. 

A  reader  indoctrinated  in  the  German  schools  is, 
therefore,  free  not  to  read  further.  My  object  is 
neither  to  repeat  his  familiar  arguments  in  their 
usual  form,  nor  to  refute  them;  my  object  is  to 
describe  them  intelligibly  and  to  judge  them  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  layman,  and  in  his  interests. 
For  those  who  wish  to  study  German  philosophy,  the 
original  authors  are  at  hand:  all  I  would  give  here 
is  the  aroma  of  German  philosophy  that  has  reached 
my  nostrils.  If  the  reader  has  smelt  something  of 
the  kind,  so  much  the  better:  we  shall  then  under- 
stand each  other.  The  function  of  history  or  of 
criticism  is  not  passively  to  reproduce  its  subject- 
matter.  One  real  world,  with  one  stout  corpus  of 
German  philosophy,  is  enough.  Reflection  and  de- 
scription are  things  superadded,  things  which  ought 
to  be  more  winged  and  more  selective  than  what 
they  play  upon.  They  are  echoes  of  reality  in  the 
sphere  of  art,  sketches  which  may  achieve  all  the 
truth  appropriate  to  them  without  belying  their 
creative  limitarions :  for  their  essence  is  to  be  intel- 
lectual symbols,  at  once  indicative  and  original. 

Egotism— subjectivity  in  thought  and  wilfulness 
in  morals — which  is  the  soul  of  German  philosophy. 


PREFACE 


is  by  no  means  a  gratuitous  thing.  It  is  a  genuine 
expression  of  the  pathetic  situation  in  which  any 
animal  finds  itself  upon  earth,  and  any  intelligence 
in  the  universe.  It  is  an  inevitable  and  initial  cir- 
cumstance in  life.  But  like  every  material  accident, 
it  is  a  thing  to  abstract  from  and  to  discount  as  far 
as  possible.  The  perversity  of  the  Germans,  the 
childishness  and  sophistry  of  their  position,  lies  only 
in  glorifying  what  is  an  inevitable  impediment,  and 
in  marking  time  on  an  earthly  station  from  which 
the  spirit  of  man — at  least  in  spirit — ^is  called  to  fly. 
This  glorified  and  dogged  egotism,  which  a  thou- 
sand personal  and  technical  evidences  had  long 
revealed  to  me  in  German  philosophy,  might  now, 
I  should  think,  be  evident  to  the  whole  world.  Not 
that  the  German  philosophers  are  responsible  for  the 
war,  or  for  that  recrudescence  of  corporate  fanaticism 
which  prepared  it  from  afar.  They  merely  shared 
and  justified  prophetically  that  spirit  of  uncom- 
promising self-assertion  and  metaphysical  conceit 
which  the  German  nation  is  now  reducing  to  action. 
It  is  a  terrible  thing  to  have  a  false  religion,  all  the 
more  terrible  the  deeper  its  sources  are  in  the  human 
soul.  Like  many  a  false  religion  before  it,  this  which 
now  inspires  the  Germans  has  made  a  double  assault 
upon  mankind,  one  with  the  secular  arm,  and  another 
by  solemn  asseverations  and  sophistries.  This  assault, 


H 


8      EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

though  its  incidental  methods  may  be  dubious,  has 
been  bold  and  honest  enough  in  principle.  It  has 
been  like  those  which  all  conquerors  and  all  founders 
of  militant  religions  have  made  at  intervals  against 
Uberty  or  reason.  And  the  issue  will  doubtless  be 
the  same.  Liberty  may  be  maimed,  but  not  killed; 
reason  may  be  bent,  but  not  broken.  The  dark 
aggression  is  to  be  repelled,  if  possible,  by  force  of 
arms;  but  failing  that,  it  will  be  nullified  in  time 
by  the  indomitable  moral  resistance  which  maturer 
races,  richer  in  wisdom,  can  exert  successfully  against 
the  rode  will  of  the  conqueror. 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. 

1.  The  General  Character  of  German 
II.  The  Protestant  Heritage 

III.  Transcendentalism  . 

IV.  Hints  of  Egotism  in  Goethe 
V.  Seeds  of  Egotism  in  Kant 

VI.  Transcendentalism  Perfected 
VII.  FiCHTE  ON  the  Mission  of  Germany 
VIII.  The  Egotism  of  Ideas 
IX.  Egotism  and  Selfishness. 
X.  The  Breach  with  Christianity 
XI.  Nietzsche  and  Schopenhauer 
XII.  The  Ethics  of  Nietzsche. 

XIII.  The  Superman  . 

XIV.  Heathenism       • 
XV.  German  Genius         •        • 

XVI.  Egotism  in  Practice         • 

Index   .    .    .    • 


Philosophy 


page 
II 

21 

32 

43 

54 

65 

73 
84 

99 
104 
114 

"3 
136 

144 
154 
162 

169 


I 


EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN 
PHILOSOPHY 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

What  I  propose  in  these  pages  to  call  German  philo- 
sophy is  not  identical  with  philosophy  in  Germany. 
The  religion  of  the  Germans  is  foreign  to  them;  and 
the  philosophy  associated  with  religion  before  the 
Reformation,  and  in  Catholic  circles  since,  is  a  system 
native  to  the  late  Roman  Empire.  Their  irreligion 
is  foreign  too;  the  sceptical  and  the  scientific  schools 
that  have  been  conspicuous  in  other  countries  have 
taken  root  in  Germany  as  well.  Thus,  if  we  counted 
the  Catholics  and  the  old-fashioned  Protestants  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  materialists  (who  call  them- 
selves monists)  on  the  other,  we  should  very  likely 
discover  that  the  majority  of  intelligent  Germans 
held  views  which  German  philosophy  proper  must 
entirely  despise,  and  that  this  philosophy  seemed  as 
strange  to  them  as  to  other  people. 

For  an  original  and  profound  philosophy  has  arisen 
in  Germany,  as  distinct  in  genius  and  method  from 

XX 


12     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


Greek  and  Catholic  phflosophy  as  this  is  from  the 
Indian  systems.  The  great  characteristic  of  German 
philosophy  is  that  it  is  deliberately  subjective  and 
limits  itself  to  the  articulation  of  self-consciousness. 
The  whole  world  appears  there,  but  at  a  certain 
remove;  it  is  viewed  and  accepted  merely  as  an  idea 
framed  in  consciousness,  according  to  principles 
fetched  from  the  most  personal  and  subjective  parts 
of  the  mind,  such  as  duty,  will,  or  the  grammar  of 
thought.  The  direction  in  which  German  philosophy 
is  profound  is  the  direction  of  inwardness.  Whatever 
we  may  think  of  its  competence  in  other  matters,  it 
probes  the  self — ^as  unaided  introspection  may — ^with 
extraordinary  intentness  and  sincerity.  In  inventing 
the  transcendental  method,  the  study  of  subjective 
projections  and  perspectives,  it  has  added  a  new 
dimension  to  human  speculation. 

The  foreign  religion  and  the  foreign  irreligion  of 
Germany  are  both  incompatible  with  German  philo- 
sophy. This  philosophy  cannot  accept  any  dogmas, 
for  its  fundamental  conviction  is  that  there  are  no 
eadsting  things  except  imagined  ones :  God  as  much 
as  matter  is  exhausted  by  the  thought  of  him,  and 
entirely  resident  in  this  thought.  The  notion  that 
knowledge  can  discover  anything,  or  that  anything 
previously  existing  can  be  revealed,  is  discarded 
altogether:  for  there  is  nothing  to  discover,  and  even 


CHARACTER  OF  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY    13 

if  there  was,  the  mind  could  not  reach  it;  it  could 
only  reach  the  idea  it  might  call  up  from  its  own  depths. 
This  idea  might  be  perhaps  justified  and  necessary 
by  virtue  of  its  subjective  roots  in  the  will  or  in  duty, 
but  never  justified  by  its  supposed  external  object, 
an  object  with  which  nobody  could  ever  compare  it. 
German  philosophy  is  no  more  able  to  believe  in 
God  than  in  matter,  though  it  must  talk  continually 

of  both. 

At  the  same  time  this  subjectivism  is  not  irreligious. 
It  is  mystical,  faithful,  enthusiastic:  it  has  all  the 
qualities  that  gave  early  Protestantism  its  religious 
force.  It  is  rebellious  to  external  authority,  conscious 
of  inward  light  and  of  absolute  duties.  It  is  full  of 
faith,  if  by  faith  we  understand  not  definite  beliefs 
held  on  inadequate  evidence,  but  a  deep  trust  in 
instinct  and  destiny. 

Rather  than  religious,  however,  this  philosophy  is 
romantic.  It  accepts  passionately  the  aims  suggested 
to  it  by  sentiment  or  impulse.  It  despises  prudence 
and  flouts  the  understanding.  In  Faust  and  in  Pier 
Gynt  we  have  a  poetic  echo  of  its  fundamental  in- 
spiration, freed  from  theological  accommodations^  or 
academic  cant.  It  is  the  adventure  of  a  wild, 
sensitive,  boyish  mind,  that  now  plays  the  fairy 
prince  and  now  the  shabby  and  vicious  egoist;  a 
rebel  and  an  enthusiast,  yet  often  a  sensualist  to 


H     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


boot  by  way  of  experiment;    a  man  eager  for  ex- 
perience, but  blind  to  its  lessons,  vague  about  nature, 
and  blundering  about  duty,  but  confident  that  he 
can  in  some  way  play  the  magician  and  bring  the 
worid  round  to  serve  his  will  and  spiritual  necessities. 
Happiness  and  despair  are  alike  impossible  with 
such  a  temperament.   Its  empiricism  is  perennial.   It 
cannot  lose  faith  in  the  vital  impulse  it  expresses; 
all  its  fancy,  ingenuity,  and  daring  philosophy  are 
embroideries  which  it  makes  upon  a  dark  experience. 
It  cannot  take  outer  facts  very  seriously;   they  are 
but  symbols  of  its  own  unfathomable  impulses.    So 
pensive  animals  might  reason.   The  just  and  humble 
side  of  German  philosophy— if  we  can  lend  it  virtues 
to  which  it  is  deeply  indifferent— is  that  it  accepts 
the  total  relativity  of  the  human  mind  and  luxuriates 
in  it,  much  as  we  might  expect  spiders  or  porpoises 
to  luxuriate  in  their  special  sensibility,  making  no 
vain  effort  to  peep  through  the  bars  of  their  psycho- 
logical prison. 

This  sort  of  agnosticism  in  a  minor  key  is  con- 
spicuous in  the  CntfjiAf  o/Pwrif  ^/tfxon.  In  a  major 
key  it  reappears  m  Nietzsche,  when  he  proclaims  a 
preference  for  illusion  over  truth.  More  mystically 
expressed  it  pervades  the  intervening  thmkers.  The 
more  profound  they  are  the  more  content  and  even 
delighted  they  are  to  consider  nothing  but  their  own 


CHARACTER  OF  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY    15 


creations.  Their  theory  of  knowledge  proclaims  that 
knowledge  is  impossible.  You  know  only  your  so- 
called  knowledge,  which  itself  knows  nothing;  and 
you  are  limited  to  the  autobiography  of  your  illusions. 
The  Germans  express  this  limitation  of  their  philo- 
sophy by  calling  it  idealism.  In  several  senses  it  fully 
deserves  this  name.  It  is  idealistic  psychologically 
in  that  it  regards  mental  life  as  groundless  and  all- 
inclusive,  and  denies  that  a  material  world  exists, 
except  as  an  idea  necessarily  bred  in  the  mind.  It 
is  idealistic,  too,  in  that  it  puts  behind  experience  a 
background  of  concepts,  and  not  of  matter;  a  ghostly 
framework  of  laws,  categories,  moral  or  logical  prin- 
ciples to  be  the  stiffening  and  skeleton  of  sensible 
experience,  and  to  lend  it  some  substance  and  mean- 
ing. It  is  idealistic  in  morals  also,  in  that  it  approves 
of  pursuing  the  direct  objects  of  will,  without  looking 
over  one's  shoulder  or  reckoning  the  consequences. 
These  direct  objects  are  ideals,  whereas  happiness,  or 
any  satisfaction  based  on  renunciation  and  com- 
promise, seems  to  these  spirited  philosophers  the  aim 
of  a  degraded,  calculating  mind.  The  word  idealism, 
used  in  this  sense,  should  not  mislead  us ;  it  indicates 
sympathy  with  life  and  its  passions,  particularly  the 
learned  and  political  ones;  it  does  not  indicate  any 
distaste  for  material  goods  or  material  agencies.  The 
German  moral  imagination  is  in  its  first  or  dogmatic 


i6     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


stage,  not  in  the  second  or  critical  one.   It  is  in  love 
with  life  rather  than  with  wisdom. 

There  is  accordingly  one  sense  of  the  term  idealism 
— ^the  original  one — ^in  which  this  philosophy  knows 
nothing  of  it,  the  Platonic  and  poetic  sense  in  which 
the  ideal  is  something  beUer  than  the  fact.  The 
Platonic  idealist  is  the  man  by  nature  so  wedded  to 
perfection  that  he  sees  in  everything  not  the  reality 
but  the  faultless  ideal  which  the  reality  misses  and 
suggests.  Hegel,  indeed,  drew  an  outline  portrait  of 
things,  according  to  what  he  thought  their  ideal 
essence;  but  it  was  uglier  and  more  dreary  than 
the  things  themselves.  Platonic  idealism  requires  a 
gift  of  impassioned  contemplation,  an  incandescent 
fancy  that  leaps  from  the  things  of  sense  to  the  goals 
of  beauty  and  desire.  It  spurns  the  earth  and  believes 
in  heaven,  a  form  of  religion  most  odious  to  the 
Germans.  They  think  this  sort  of  idealism  not  only 
visionary  but  somewhat  impious;  for  their  own 
religion  takes  the  form  of  piety  and  aflFection  towards 
everything  homely,  imperfect,  unstable,  and  pro- 
gressive. They  yearn  to  pursue  the  unattainable  and 
encounter  the  unforeseen.  This  romantic  craving 
hangs  together  with  their  taste  for  the  picturesque 
and  emphatic  in  the  plastic  arts,  and  for  the  up- 
welling  evanescent  emotions  of  music.  Yet  their 
idealism  is  a  religion  of  the  actual.  It  rejects  nothmg 


CHARACTER  OF  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY    17 

in  the  daily  experience  of  life,  and  looks  to  nothing 
essentially  different  beyond.  It  looks  only  for  more 
of  the  same  thing,  believing  in  perpetual  growth, 
which  is  an  ambiguous  notion.  Under  the  fashionable 
name  of  progress  what  these  idealists  sincerely  cherish 
is  the  vital  joy  of  transition;  and  usually  the  joy  of 
this  transition  lies  much  more  in  shedding  their 
present  state  than  in  attaining  a  better  one.  For 
they  suffer  and  wrestle  continually,  and  by  a  curious 
and  deeply  animal  instinct,  they  hug  and  sanctify 
this  endless  struggle  all  the  more  when  it  rends  and 
bewilders  them,  bravely  declaring  it  to  be  absolute, 
infinite,  and  divine. 

Such  in  brief  is  German  philosophy,  at  least,  such 
it  might  be  said  to  be  if  any  clear  account  of  it  did 
not  necessarily  falsify  it;  but  one  of  its  chief  charac- 
teristics, without  which  it  would  melt  away,  is 
ambiguity.  You  cannot  maintain  that  the  natural 
world  is  the  product  of  the  human  mind  without 
changing  the  meaning  of  the  word  mind  and  of  the 
word  human.  You  cannot  deny  that  there  is  a 
substance  without  turning  into  a  substance  whatever 
you  substitute  for  it.  You  cannot  identify  yourself 
with  God  without  at  once  asserting  and  denying  the 
existence  of  God  and  of  yourself.  When  you  speak 
of  such  a  thing  as  the  consciousness  of  society  you 
must  never  decide  whether  you  mean  the  conscious- 


18     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


ness  individuals  have  of  society  or  a  fabled  con- 
sciousness which  society  is  to  have  of  itself:  the  first 
meaning  would  spoil  your  eloquence,  and  the  second 
would  betray  your  mythology. 

What  is  involved  in  all  these  equivocations  is  not 
merely  a  change  of  vocabulary,  that  shifting  use  of 
language  which  time  brings  with  it.    No,  the  per- 
sistence of  the  old  meanings  alone  gives  point  to  the 
assertions  that  change  them  and  identify  them  with 
their  opposites.      Everywhere,   therefore,  in   these 
speculations,  you  must  remain  in  suspense  as  to 
what  precisely  you  are  talking  about.     A  vague, 
muffled,  dubious  thought  must  carry  you  along  as 
on  a  current.     Your  scepticism  must  not  derange 
your  common  sense;  your  conduct  must  not  express 
your  radical  opinions;   a  certain  afilatus  must  bear 
you  nobly  onward  through  a  perpetual  incoherence. 
You  must  always  be  thinking  not  of  what  you  are 
thinking  of  but  of  yourself  or  of  "  something  higher.'* 
Otherwise  you  cannot  live  this  philosophy  or  under- 
stand it  from  within. 

The  mere  existence  of  this  system,  as  of  any  other, 
proves  that  a  provocation  to  frame  it  is  sometimes 
found  in  experience  or  language  or  the  puzzles  of 
reflection.  Not  that  there  need  be  any  solidity  in  it 
on  diat  account.  German  philosophy  is  a  sort  of 
religion,  and  like  other  religions  it  may  be  capable 


CHARACTER  OF  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY    19 

of  assimilating  a  great  amount  of  wisdom,  while  its 
first  foundation  is  folly.  This  first  folly  itself  will 
not  lack  plausible  grounds;  there  is  provocation 
enough  in  a  single  visit  to  a  madhouse  for  the  assertion 
that  the  mind  can  know  nothing  but  the  ideas  it 
creates;  nevertheless  the  assertion  is  false,  and  such 
facile  scepticism  loses  sight  of  the  essence  of  know- 
ledge. The  most  disparate  minds,  since  they  do  not 
regard  themselves,  may  easily  regard  the  same  object* 
Only  the  maniac  stares  at  his  own  ideas;  he  confuses 
himself  in  his  perceptions;  he  projects  them  into  the 
wrong  places,  and  takes  surrounding  objects  to  be 
different  from  what  they  are.  But  perceptions 
originally  have  external  objects;  they  express  a 
bodily  reaction,  or  some  inward  preparation  for  such 
a  reaction.  They  are  reports.  The  porpoise  and  the 
spider  are  not  shut  up  in  their  self-consciousness; 
however  foreign  to  us  may  be  the  language  of  their 
senses,  they  know  the  sea  and  air  that  we  know,  and 
have  to  meet  the  same  changes  and  accidents  there 
which  we  meet — ^and  they  even  have  to  meet  us, 
sometimes,  to  their  sorrow.  Their  knowledge  does 
not  end  in  acquaintance  with  that  sensuous  language 
of  theirs,  whatever  it  may  be,  but  flies  with  the 
import  of  that  language  and  salutes  the  forces  which 
confront  them  in  action,  and  which  also  confront  us. 
In  focussing  these  forces  through  the  lenses  and  veils 


ao     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


of  sense  knowledge  arises;  and  to  arrest  our  attention 
on  those  veils  and  lenses  and  say  they  are  all  we 
know,  belies  the  facts  of  the  case  and  is  hardly 
honest.  If  we  could  really  do  that,  we  should  be 
retracting  the  first  act  of  intelligence  and  becoming 
artificial  idiots.  Yet  this  sophistication  is  the  first 
principle  of  German  philosophy  (borrowed,  indeed, 
from  non-Germans),  and  is  the  thesis  supposed  to  be 
proved  in  Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 

The  German  people,  according  to  Fichte  and  Hegel, 
are  called  by  the  plan  of  Providence  to  occupy  the 
supreme  place  in  the  history  of  the  universe. 

A  little  consideration  of  this  belief  will  perhaps 
lead  us  more  surely  to  the  heart  of  German  philo- 
sophy than  would  the  usual  laborious  approach  to 
it  through  what  is  called  the  theory  of  knowledge. 
This  theory  of  knowledge  is  a  tangle  of  equivocations; 
but  even  if  it  were  correct  it  would  be  something 
technical,  and  the  technical  side  of  a  great  philo* 
sophy,  interesting  as  it  may  be  in  itself,  hardly  ever 
determines  its  essential  views.  These  essential  views 
are  derived  rather  from  instincts  or  traditions  which 
the  technique  of  the  system  is  designed  to  defend; 
or,  at  least,  they  decide  how  that  technique  shall  be 
applied  and  interpreted. 

The  moment  we  hear  Fichte  and  Hegel  mentioning 
a  providential  plan  of  the  world,  we  gather  that  in 
their  view  the  history  of  things  is  not  infinite  and 
endlessly  various,  but  has  a  closed  plot  like  a  drama 
in  which  one  nation  (the  very  one  to  which  these 

21 


22     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


philosophers  belong)  has  the  central  place  and  the 
chief  r61e:  and  we  perceive  at  once  that  theirs  is  a 
revealed  philosophy.  It  is  the  heir  of  Judaism.  It 
could  never  have  been  formed  by  free  observation  of 
life  and  nature,  like  the  philosophy  of  Greece  or  of 
the  Renaissance.  It  is  Protestant  theology  rationalised. 
The  element  of  religious  faith,  in  the  Protestant  sense 
of  the  word  faith,  is  essential  to  it.  About  the  witness 
of  tradition,  even  about  the  witness  of  the  senses,  it 
may  be  as  sceptical  as  it  Ukes.  It  may  reduce  nature 
and  God  to  figments  of  the  mind;  but  throughout 
its  criticism  of  all  matters  of  fact  it  will  remain 
deeply  persuaded  that  the  questioning  and  striving 
spirit  within  is  indefeasible  and  divine.  It  will  never 
reduce  aU  things,  including  the  mind,  to  loose  and 
intractable  appearances,  as  might  a  free  idealism.  It 
will  employ  its  scepticism  to  turn  all  things  into  ideas, 
in  order  to  chain  them  the  more  tightly  to  the  moral 
interests  of  the  thinker.  These  moral  interests, 
human  and  pathetic  as  they  may  seem  to  the  out- 
sider, it  will  exalt  immeasurably,  pronouncing  them 
to  be  groundless  and  immutable;  and  it  will  never 
tolerate  the  suspicion  that  all  things  might  not 
minister  to  them. 

From  the  same  tenet  of  Fichte  and  Hegel  we  may 
also  learn  that  in  the  plan  of  the  world,  as  this 
revealed  philosophy  conceives  it,  the  principal  figures 


THE  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE  23 


are  not  individuals,  Uke  the  Creator,  the  Redeemer, 
and  one's  own  soul,  but  nations  and  institutions*  It 
is  of  the  essence  of  Protestantism  and  of  German 
philosophy  that  reUgion  should  graduaUy  drop  its 
supernatural  personages  and  comforting  private  hopes 
and  be  absorbed  in  the  duty  of  living  manfully  and 
conscientiously  the  conventional  life  of  this  world. 
Not  the  whole  life  of  the  world,  however,  since  gay 
religions  and  many  other  gay  things  are  excluded, 
or  admitted  only  as  childish  toys.  Positive  religion, 
in  fact,  disappears,  as  well  as  the  frivolous  sort  of 
worldliness,  and  there  remains  only  a  consecrated 
worldliness  that  is  deliberate  and  imposed  as  a  duty. 
Just  as  in  pantheism  God  is  naturalised  into  a  cosmic 
force,  so  in  German  philosophy  the  BibUcal  piety  of 
the  earlier  Protestants  is  secularised  into  social  and 

patriotic  zeal. 

German  philosophy  has  inherited  from  Protestant- 
ism its  earnestness  and  pious  intention;  also  a 
tendency  to  retain,  for  whatever  changed  view«  it 
may  put  forward,  the  names  of  former  beliefs. 
God,  freedom,  and  immortality,  for  instance,  may 
eventually  be  transformed  into  their  opposites,  since 
the  oracle  of  faith  is  internal;  but  their  names  may 
be  kept,  together  with  a  feeUng  that  what  wiU  now 
bear  those  names  is  much  more  satisfying  than  what 
they  originally  stood  for.     If  it  should  seem  that 


it 


24     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


God  came  nearest  to  us,  and  dwelt  within  us,  in  the 
form  of  vital  energy,  if  freedom  should  turn  out 
rcaUy  to  mean  personality,  if  immortality,  in  the  end^ 
should  prove  identical  with  the  endlessness  of  human 
progress,  and  if  these  new  thoughts  should  satisfy 
and  encourage  us  as  the  evanescent  ideas  of  God,, 
freedom,  and  immortality  satisfied  and  encouraged 
our  fathers,  why  should  we  not  use  these  consecrated 
names  for  our  new  conceptions,  and  thus  indicate 
the  continuity  of  religion  amid  the  flux  of  science  ? 
This  expedient  is  not  always  hypocritical.     It  was 
quite  candid  in  men  like  Spinoza  and  Emerson,  whose 
attachment  to  positive  religion  had  insensibly  givea 
way  to  a  half-mystical,  half-intellectual  satisfaction 
with  the  natural  world,  as  their  eloquent  imagination 
conceived  it.     But  whether  candid  or  disingenuous,. 
this  habit  has  the  advantage  of  oiling  the  wheels 
of  progress  with  a  sacred  unction.    In  facilitating 
diange  it  blurs  the  consciousness  of  change,  and 
leads  people  to  associate  with  their  new  opinions 
sentiments  which  are  logically  incompatible  with 
them.      The  attachment   of  many  *tender-minded 
people  to  German  phUosophy  is  due  to  this  circum- 
stance, for  German  philosophy  is  not  tender. 

The  beauty  and  the  torment  of  Protestantism  is 
that  it  opens  the  door  so  wide  to  what  lies  beyond 
it.   This  progressive  quality  it  has  fully  transmitted. 


THE  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 


*5 


to  all  the  systems  of  German  philosophy.  Not  that 
each  of  them,  like  the  earlier  Protestant  sects,  does 
not  think  itself  true  and  final;  but  in  spite  of  itself 
it  suggests  some  next  thing.  We  must  expect,  there- 
fore, that  the  more  conservative  elements  in  each 
system  should  provoke  protests  in  the  next  genera- 
tion; and  it  is  hard  to  say  whether  such  inconstancy 
is  a  weakness,  or  is  simply  loyalty  to  the  principle 
of  progress.  Kant  was  a  puritan;  he  revered  the  ' 
rule  of  right  as  something  immutable  and  holy, 
perhaps  never  obeyed  in  the  world.  Fichte  was 
somewhat  freer  in  his  Calvinism;  the  rule  of  right 
was  the  moving  power  in  all  life  and  nature,  though 
it  might  have  been  betrayed  by  a  doomed  and  self- 
seeking  generation.  Hegel  was  a  very  free  and 
superior  Lutheran;  he  saw  that  the  divine  will  was 
necessarily  and  continuously  realised  in  this  world, 
though  we  might  not  recognise  the  fact  in  our  petty 
moral  judgments.  Schopenhauer,  speaking  again  for 
this  human  judgment,  revolted  against  that  cruel 
optimism,  and  was  an  indignant  atheist;  and  finally, 
in  Nietzsche,  this  atheism  became  exultant;  he 
thought  it  the  part  of  a  man  to  abet  the  movement 
of  things,  however  calamitous,  in  order  to  appro- 
priate its  wild  force  and  be  for  a  moment  the  very 
crest  of  its  wave. 
Protestantism  was  not  a  reformation  by  accident^ 


26     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


THE  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 


t'  ! 


because  it  happened  to  find  the  church  corrupt;   it 
is  a  reformation  essentially,  in  that  every  individual 
must  reinterpret  the  Bible  and  the  practices  of  the 
church  in  his  own  spirit.    If  he  accepted  them  with- 
out renewing  them  in  the  light  of  his  personal  religious 
»  experience,  he  would  never  have  what  Protestantism 
thinks  living  religion.     German  philosophy  has  in- 
herited this  characteristic;    it  is  not  a  cumulative 
science  that  can  be  transmitted  ready  made.    It  is 
essentially  a  reform,  a  revision  of  traditional  know- 
ledge, which  each  neophyte  must  make  for  himself, 
under  pain  of  rendering  only  lip-service  to  trans- 
cendental truth,  and  remaining  at  heart  unregenerate. 
His  chief  business  is  to  be  converted;  he  must  refute 
for  himself  the  natural  views  with  which  he  and  all 

other  men  have  begun  life.    And  still  these  views 

like  the  temptations  of  Satan — ^mevitably  form  them- 
selves afresh  in  each  generation,  and  even  in  the 
philosopher,  between  one  spell  of  introspective 
thought  and  another,  so  that  he  always  has  to  re- 
capitulate his  saving  arguments  from  the  beginning. 
Each  new  idealist  in  each  of  his  books,  often  in  every 
lecture  and  every  chapter,  must  run  back  to  refute 
again  the  same  homely  opponents— materialism, 
naturalism,  dualism,  or  whatever  he  may  call  them. 
Dead  as  each  day  he  declares  these  foes  to  be,  he 
has  to  fight  them  again  in  his  own  soul  on  the  morrow. 


27 


Hence  his  continual  preoccupation  lest  he  fall  away, 
or  lest  the  world  should  forget  him.  To  preserve 
his  freedom  and  his  idealism  he  must  daily  conquer 
them  anew.  This  philosophy  is  secondary,  critical, 
sophistical;  it  has  a  perennial  quarrel  with  inevitable 
opinions. 

Protestantism,  in  spite  of  its  personal  status> 
wished  to  revert  to  primitive  Qiristianity.  In  this 
desire  it  was  guided  partly  by  a  conventional  faith 
in  the  Scriptures,  and  partly  by  a  deep  sympathy 
with  experimental  religion.  German  religion  and 
philosophy  are  homesick:  they  wish  to  be  quite 
primitive  once  more.  And  they  actually  remain 
primitive  in  spirit,  spontaneous  and  tentative,  even 
in  the  midst  of  the  most  cumbrous  erudition,  as  a 
composition  of  Diirer's,  where  flesh,  fish,  and  fowl 
crowd  every  corner,  still  remains  primitive,  puzzled, 
and  oppressed.  Such  a  naive  but  overloaded  mind 
^  is  lost  in  admiration  of  its  own  depth  and  richness; 
yet,  in  fact,  it  is  rather  helpless  and  immature;  it 
has  not  learned  to  select  what  sufiices,  or  to  be 
satisfied  with  what  is  best. 

Faith  for  the  Germans  must  be  a  primitive  and 
groundless  assurance,  not  knowledge  credibly  trans-  ♦ 
mitted  by  others  whose  experience  may  have  been 
greater  than  our  own.    Even  philosophy  is  not  con- 
ceived as  a  reasonable  adjustment  to  what  may  have 


i 


lill. 


,l, 


28     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

been  discovered  to  be  the  constitution  of  the  world; 
it  is  in  the  first  instance  a  criticism,  to  dissolve  that 
reputed  knowledge,  and  then,  when  primitive  inno- 
cence  is  happily  restored,  it  is  a  wager  or  demand 
made  beyond  all  evidence,  and  in  contempt  of  all 
evidence,  in  obedience  to  an  innate  impulse.     Of 
course,  it  is  usual,  as  a  concession  to  the  weaker 
brethren,  to  assume  that  experience,  in  the  end,  will 
seem  to  satisfy  these  demands,  and  that  we  shall 
win  our  bets  and  our  wars;  but  the  point  of  principle, 
borrowed  by  German  philosophy  from  Protestantism' 
is  that  the  authority  of  faith  is  intrinsic  and  absolute,' 
while  any  external  corroboration  of  it  is  problematical 
and  not  essential  to  the  tightness  of  the  assumptions 
that  faith  makes.    In  this  we  have  a  fundamental 
characteristic  of  the  school.   Carried  (as  it  seldom  is) 
to  its  logical  conclusion,  it  leads  to  the  ultra-romantic 
and  ultra-idealistic  doctrine  that  the  very  notion  of 
truth  or  fact  is  a  fiction  of  the  will,  invented  to  ' 
satisfy  our  desire  for  some  fixed  point  of  reference 
in  thought.  In  this  doctrine  we  may  see  the  culmina- 
tion  of  the  Protestant  rebellion  against  mediation  in 
religion,   against   external   authority,   and   against 
dogma. 

The  Protestant  precept  to  search  the  Scriptures, 
and  the  sense  that  every  man  must  settle  the  highest 
questions  for  himself,  have  contributed  to  the  zeal 


THE  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 


29 


with  which  science  and  scholarship  have  been  pur- 
sued in  Germany.  In  no  other  country  has  so  large, 
so  industrious,  and  (amid  its  rude  polemics)  so  co- 
operative a  set  of  professors  devoted  itself  to  all 
sorts  of  learning.  But  as  the  original  motive  was  to 
save  one's  soul,  an  apologetic  and  scholastic  manner 
has  often  survived:  the  issue  is  prejudged  and 
egotism  has  appeared  even  in  science.  For  favourable 
as  Protestantism  is  to  investigation  and  learning, 
it  is  almost  incompatible  with  clearness  of  thought 
and  fundamental  freedom  of  attitude.  If  the  con- 
trolling purpose  is  not  political  or  religious,  it  is  at 
least  "  philosophical,"  that  is  to  say,  arbitrary. 

We  must  remember  that  the  greater  part  of  the 
"  facts  "  on  which  theories  are  based  are  reported  or 
inferred  facts — all  in  the  historical  sciences,  since  the 
documents  and  sources  must  first  be  pronounced 
genuine  or  spurious  by  the  philosophical  critic.  Here 
presumptions  and  private  methods  of  inference 
determine  what  shall  be  admitted  for  a  fact,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  interpretation  to  be  given  to  it.  Hence 
a  piece  of  Biblical  or  Homeric  criticism,  a  history  of 
Rome  or  of  Germany  often  becomes  a  little  system 
of  egotistical  philosophy,  posited  and  defended  with 
all  the  parental  zeal  and  all  the  increasing  conviction 
with  which  a  prophet  defends  his  supernatural 
inspirations. 


JO     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


THE  PROTESTANT  HERITAGE 


31 


The  distinction  between  Mary  and  Martha  is  not 
a  German  distinction:  in  Germany  the  rapt  idealist 
is  busy  about  many  things,  so  that  his  action  is  apt  to 
be  heady  and  his  contemplation  perturbed.  Only  the 
principle  is  expected  to  be  spiritual,  the  illustrations 
must  all  be  material  and  mundane.  There  is  no 
paradox  in  German  idealism  turning  to  material 
science,  commerce,  and  war  for  a  fresh  field  of  opera- 
tion. No  degeneracy  is  implied  in  such  an  extension 
of  its  vocation,  especially  when  the  other  ideals  of 
the  state— pure  learning,  art,  social  organisation- 
are  pursued  at  the  same  time  with  an  equal  ardour. 
The  test  of  a  genuine  German  idealist  is  that  he 
should  forget  and  smk  his  private  happiness  in 
whatever  service  the  state  may  set  him  to  do. 

In  view  of  this  political  fidelity  the  changing 
opinions  of  men  are  all  indifferent  to  true  religion. 
It  is  not  a  question  of  correctness  in  opinion  or 
conduct,  since  for  the  idealist  there  can  be  no  ex- 
ternal standard  of  truth,  existence,  or  excellence  on 
which  such  correctness  could  depend.  Ideas  are  so 
much  real  experience  and  have  no  further  subject- 
matter.  Thought  is  simply  more  or  less  rich,  elaborate, 
or  vehement,  like  a  musical  composition,  and  more 
or  less  consistent  with  itself.  It  is  all  a  question  of 
depth  and  fulness  of  experience,  obtained  by  hacking 
one's  way  through   this  visionary  and    bewitched 


existence,  the  secret  purpose  of  which  is  to  serve 
the  self  in  its  development.  In  this  philosophy 
imagination  that  is  sustained  is  called  knowledge, 
illusion  that  is  coherent  is  called  truth,  and  will  that 
is  systematic  is  called  virtue. 

Evidently  the  only  sanction  or  vindication  that 
such  a  belief  will  look  for  is  the  determination  to 
reassert  it.  Religion  is  here  its  own  heaven,  and 
faith  the  only  proof  of  its  own  truth.  What  is  har- 
monised in  the  end  is  not  the  experience  through 
which  people  have  actually  passed  but  only  the 
echoes  of  that  experience  chiming  in  the  mystic  ear. 
Memory  too  can  play  the  egotist.  Subjectivism  can 
rule  even  within  the  subject  and  can  make  him 
substitute  his  idea  of  himself,  in  his  most  self-satisfied 
moment,  for  the  poor  desultory  self  that  he  has 
actually  been- 

The  German  philosophers  have  carried  on  Pro- 
testantism beyond  itself.  They  have  separated  the 
two  ingredients  mingled  in  tracUtional  religions.  One  ^ 
of  these  ingredients — ^the  vital  faith  or  self-trust  of 
the  animal  will — ^they  have  retained.  The  other — ^the 
lessons  of  experience — ^they  have  rejected.  To  which 
element  the  name  of  religion  should  still  be  given, 
if  it  is  given  to  either,  is  a  matter  of  indifference. 
The  important  thing  is  that,  call  it  religion  or  irre- 
ligion,  we  should  know  what  we  are  clinging  to. 


TRANSCENDENTALISM 


33 


CHAPTER  III 


TRANSCENDENTALISM 


'■i 


FicHTE  called  Locke  the  worst  of  philosophers,  but 
it  was  ungrateful  of  him,  seeing  that  his  own  philo- 
sophy was  founded  on  one  of  Locke's  errors.  It  was 
Locke  who  first  thought  of  looking  into  his  own 
breast  to  find  there  the  genuine  properties  of  gold 
and  of  an  apple;  and  it  is  clear  that  nothing  but 
lack  of  consecutiveness  and  courage  kept  him  from 
finding  the  whole  universe  in  the  same  generous 
receptacle*  This  method  of  looking  for  reality  in 
one's  own  breast,  when  practised  with  due  consecu- 
tiveness and  courage  by  the  Germans,  became  the 
transcendental  method;  but  it  must  be  admitted 
that  the  German  breast  was  no  longer  that  ana- 
tomical region  which  Locke  had  intended  to  probe, 
but  a  purely  metaphysical  point  of  departure,  a 
migratory  ego  that  could  be  here,  there,  and  every- 
where at  once,  being  present  at  any  point  from 
which  thought  or  volition  might  be  taken  to  radiate. 
It  was  no  longer  so  easy  to  entrap  as  the  soul  of 
Locke,  which  he  asserted  travelled  with  him  in  his 

coach  from  London  to  Oxford.    But  the  practice  of 

3a 


looking  for  all  things  within  one's  own  breast,  in  the 
subtler  sense  of  searching  for  them  in  one's  memory 
and  experience,  begat  in  time  the  whole  romantic 
and  subjective  school  of  philosophy. 

Leibniz,  the  first  of  German  philosophers,  although 
an  enemy  of  Locke's  sensualism  and  of  his  slackness 
in  logic,  was  even  more  explicit  in  assigning  a  mental 
seat  to  all  sensible  objects.  The  soul,  he  said,  had 
no  windows  and,  he  might  have  added,  no  doors; 
no  light  could  come  to  it  from  without;  and  it  could 
not  exert  any  transitive  force  or  make  any  difference 
beyond  its  own  insulated  chamber.  It  was  a  camera 
obscuray  with  a  universe  painted  on  its  impenetrable 
walls.  The  changes  which  went  on  in  it  were  like 
those  in  a  dream,  due  to  the  charge  of  pent-up 
energies  and  fecundities  within  it;  for  the  Creator 
had  wound  it  up  at  the  creation  like  a  clock,  destined 
to  go  for  ever,  striking  infinite  hours,  with  ever  richer 
chimes. 

Here,  in  miniature,  with  a  clearness  and  beauty 
never  afterwards  equalled,  we  have  the  nature  and 
movement  of  the  transcendental  self  set  forth  before 
us:  a  closed  circle  of  experience,  admitting  of  no 
relations  with  anything  beyond,  but  infinite  in  its 
own  potential  developments,  and  guided  by  an  inner 
force,  according  to  an  innate  unconscious  plan.  All 
duties,  all  principles  of  interpretation,  all  data,  all 

c 


Il 


34     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

visioned  objects,  operated  within  this  single  life, 
diversifying  its  field  of  view,  and  testifying  to  its 
secret  endowment. 

Nevertheless,  the  later  idealists,  ungrateful  to 
Locke  for  their  first  principle,  were  ungrateful  also 
to  Leibniz  for  their  ultimate  conception,  anticipated 
by  him  in  all  its  completeness.  There  were  reasons, 
of  course,  for  this  ingratitude.  Leibniz,  like  the  tran- 
scendentalists,  had  supposed  that  the  objects  of  sense, 
as  experience  reveals  them,  were  begotten  out  of  the 
latent  nature  of  the  soul;  but  he  had  also  conceived 
that  there  were  many  souls,  as  many  as  atoms  in 
the  physical  world,  and  that  the  images  arising  in 
each  were  signs  of  the  presence  and  actual  condition 
of  its  companions.  Thus  perception,  while  yielding 
directly  only  an  idea,  as  in  a  dream,  was  indirectly 
symbolic  of  an  outer  reality,  like  a  dream  significant 
and  capable  of  interpretation.  And  being  an  un« 
daunted  rationalist,  Leibniz  assumed  that  the  sooth- 
sayer capable  of  reading  this  dream  was  reason,  and 
that  whatever  reason  conceived  to  be  right  and 
necessary  actually  must  be  true  in  the  great  outer 
world. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  Kant  deviated  into  his 
radical  subjectification  of  knowledge.  His  mind  had 
been  more  open  than  that  of  Leibniz  to  the  influences 
of  English  psychology,  it  had  stewed  longer  in  its 


TRANSCENDENTALISM 


35 


own  juice,  and  he  could  not  help  asking  how,  if  the 
senses  could  reveal  only  ideas  of  sense,  reason  was 
ever  able  to  reveal  anything  but  ideas  of  reason* 
Those  inferences  about  the  vast  world  outside,  which 
Leibniz  had  allowed  his  spirits  to  make  in  their 
solitary  confinement,  were  reduced  by  the  more 
scrupulous  Kant  to  scribblings  upon  their  prison 
walls.  These  scribblings  he  officially  termed  the 
ideas  of  pure — ^that  is,  of  unsupported — ^reason;  but 
in  his  private  capacity  he  gently  continued  to  agree 
with  Leibniz  and  to  believe  them  true. 

There  was  no  anomaly,  according  to  Kant,  in  this 
situation.  An  idea  might  by  chance  be  the  image  of 
a  reality,  but  we  could  never  know  that  it  was.  For 
the  proof  would  have  to  be  supplied  by  a  further 
idea,  and  would  terminate  in  that.  The  hypothesis 
and  the  corroboration  would  alike  be  mental,  since 
experience  was  of  ideas  and  could  envisage  nothing 
but  the  vicissitudes  of  the  mind. 

If  you  had  asked  Leibniz  what  determined  the 
order  in  which  perceptions  came  into  any  mind,  he 
would  doubtless  have  answered  that  the  Creator  did 
80,  or  (translating  that  symbol  into  its  analytic 
equivalent  in  his  system)  that  what  did  so  was  the 
innate  destiny  or  predisposition  of  that  mind  to 
develop  in  harmony  with  the  best  possible  universe* 
Here  is  a  very  remarkable  unconscious  principle  of 


36     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


evolution  seated  in  the  spirit  and  presiding  over  all 
its  experience.  This  is  precisely  what  is  meant  by 
a  transcendental  principle. 

This  principle,  unconscious  as  it  is,  sometimes 
betrays  its  mighty  workings  to  consciousness.  Besides 
the  incidental  multitude  of  ideas  which  it  breeds,  it 
makes  itself  felt  in  subterranean  strains  and  rumblings, 
in  the  sense  of  movement  and  of  longing.  This  darker 
but  deeper  manifestation  of  the  transcendental  clock- 
work Leibniz  called  appetition,  and  under  the  name 
of  Will  it  has  played  a  great  part  in  later  German 
systems.  To  call  it  Will  is,  of  course,  to  speak 
improperly  and  mythologically,  for  actual  willing 
requires  an  idea  of  what  is  willed.  When  we  say  a 
man  doesn't  know  what  he  wants,  we  mean  that  he 
can  will  nothing,  for  lack  of  a  clear  idea  of  his 
interests  and  situation,  although  he  doubtless  wants 
or  lacks  many  specific  things,  the  absence  of  which 
is  rendering  him  unhappy  and  restless.  These  in- 
stinctive appetitions  for  objects  of  which  the  mind 
is  ignorant  may,  by  a  figure  of  speech,  be  called 
imconscious  Will;  a  phrase  which  would  be  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms  if  this  word  Will  (which  I  write 
with  a  capital  letter)  were  not  used  metaphorically. 
From  this  metaphor,  when  its  boldness  seems  to  be 
dulled  by  use,  we  may  pass  insensibly  to  giving  the 
name  of  Will  to  that  whole  transcendental  potency 


TRANSCENDENTALISM 


37 


of  the  soul  which,  like  the  mainspring  of  a  watch, 
lay  coiled  up  tightly  within  it  from  the  beginning  of 
time.  A  man's  transcendental  Will  can  then  be  called 
the  source  of  everything  that  ever  happens  to  him-— 
his  birth,  his  character,  his  whole  life,  and  his  death 
— all  that  he  most  detests  and  most  emphatically 
does  not  will,  like  his  nightmares,  being  an  expression 
of  the  original  pregnancy  of  his  spirit,  and  its  tran- 
scendental principle  of  development, 
.  There  is  but  one  thing  to  add  touching  a  point 
often  left  by  these  philosophers  in  the  most  hopeless 
obscurity.     In  Leibniz  the  number  of  spirits  was 
infinite:    in  the  later  systems  they  are  reduced  to 
one.     This  difference  seems  greater  than  it  is,  for 
when  such  terms  as  Spirit  or  Will  are  used  meta- 
phorically, standing  for  unconscious  laws  of  con- 
tinuity or  development,  and  when  the  Will  or  Spirit 
present  in  me  now  may  be  said  to  have  presided  over 
the  destinies  of  my  soul  infinite  ages  before  I  was 
bom,  there  seems  to  be  no  good  reason  why  the 
same  Spirit  or  Will  should  not  preside  over  aU  the 
inhabitants  of  the  universe  at  all  times,  be  they  gods 
or  humming-birds.    Such  a  Spirit  or  Will  resembles 
the  notion  of  Providence,  or  the  law  of  evolution, 
or  the  pre-established  harmony  of  Leibniz  far  more 
than  it  resembles  a  mind.   Those  philosophers,  intent 
on  proving  that  the  Spirit  can  be  only  one,  might 


38     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

have  proceeded,  therefore,  by  urging  that  a  Spirit 
msLS  at  best  a  formal  and  abstract  law,  covering  such 
disparate  facts,  that  all  flesh  and  fowl,  all  demons 
and  angels,  might  just  as  well  be  animated  by  a 
single  Spirit.  As  it  takes  all  sorts  of  things  to  make 
a  world,  it  might  take  all  sorts  of  things  to  express 
a  Spirit. 

This  cool  and  consciously  verbal  way  of  making 
all  one,  however,  is  not  the  way  of  the  Germans. 
No  doubt  in  practice  the  unity  of  the  Spirit  or  Will 
in  their  systems  amounts  to  nothing  more,  yet  their 
intention  and  illusion  is  rather  that  whenever  two 
things  can  be  called  manifestations  of  one  Spirit  in 
the  loosest  and  most  metaphorical  sense  of  tlus  word 
they  are  thereby  proved  to  be  data  in  one  spirit  in 
the  most  intimate  and  psychological  sense  of  the 
same.  So  that  what  really  happens  to  transcen- 
dentalists  is  not  that  they  unite  all  the  transcendental 
units  of  Leibniz  into  one  even  looser  transcendental 
unit,  but  that  they  limit  the  universe  to  what  in 
Leibniz  was  one  of  an  infinite  number  of  parallel 
careers.  Nay,  they  limit  even  that  one  career  to  the 
experience  present  at  one  point,  that  of  the  most 
intense  and  comprehensive  self-consciousness. 

The  unity  they  desire  and  believe  in  is  accordingly 
an  actual  and  intense  unity.  All  its  elements  are  to 
be  viewed  at  once,  bound  and  merged  together  by 


TRANSCENDENTALISM 


39 


the  simultaneous  intuition  of  all  their  relations,  and 
this  in  a  single,  unchanging,  eternal  moment  of 
thought,  or  rather  of  unutterable  feeling.  The  union 
is,  therefore,  real,  psychic,  mystical,  and  so  close  that 
everything  that  was  to  be  united  there,  by  a  curious 
irony,  remains  outside. 

What  can  lead  serious  thinkers,  we  may  ask,  into 
such  pitfalls  and  shams?     In  this  case,  a  powerful 
and  not  unworthy  motive.     All  transcendentalism 
takes  the  point  of  view  of  what  it  calls  knowledge; 
whenever  it  mentions  anything — matter,  God,  oneself 
—it  means  not  that  thing  but  the  idea  of  it.     By 
knowledge  it  understands  the  image  or  belief,  the 
fact  of  cognition.    Whatever  is  thought  of  exists,  or 
can  exist,  in  this  philosophy,  only  for  thought;  yet 
this  thought  is  called  not  illusion  but  knowledge, 
because  knowledge  is  what  the  thought  feels  that  it  is. 
Evidently    on    this    principle    none    of   Leibniz's 
spirits  could  know  any  other,  nor  could  any  phase 
of  the  same  spirit  know  any  other  phase.    The  un- 
bridgeable chasm  of  want  of  experience  would  cut  oflE 
knowledge  from  everything  but  its  "  content,"  the 
ideas  it  has  of  its  objects.     Those  fabled  external 
objects  would  be  brought  back  into  my  ideas,  and 
identified  with  them;    my  ideas  in  turn  would  be 
drawn  in  and  identified  with  the  fact  that  I  entertain 
them   and  this  fact  itself  would  condense  into  the 


40     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


0 

more  intimate  and  present  fact  that  intensely,  vaguely, 
deeply  I  feel  that  I  am,  or  am  tending  to  be,  some- 
thing or  other.  My  Will  or  Spirit,  the  rumble  of  my 
unconscious  aj^etitions,  thus  absorbs  my  ideas,  my 
ideas  absorb  their  objects,  and  these  objects  absorb 
the  world,  past,  present,  and  future.  Earth  and 
heaven,  God  and  my  fellowmen  are  mere  expressions 
of  my  Will,  and  if  they  were  anything  more,  I  could 
not  now  be  alive  to  their  presence.  My  Will  is  absolute. 
With  that  conclusion  transcendentalism  is  complete. 

Is  such  transcendentalism  impossibly  sceptical  ?  Is 
it  absurdly  arrogant  ?   Is  it  wonderfully  true  ? 

In  so  complex  a  world  as  this,  there  is  room  for  a 
great  number  of  cross-vistas:  when  all  has  been 
surveyed  from  one  point  of  view  and  in  one  set  of 
terms,  nothing  excludes  the  same  reality  from  being 
surveyed  from  a  different  centre  and  expressed  in  a 
different  notation.  To  represent  a  man,  sculpture 
is  apparently  exhaustive;  yet  it  does  not  exclude 
painting,  or  the  utterly  disparate  description  of  the 
man  in  words;  surveys  in  which  there  need  be  no 
contradiction  in  the  deliverance,  though  there  is  the 
widest  diversity  and  even  incommensurability  in  the 
methods.  Each  sort  of  net  drawn  through  the  same 
sea  catches  a  different  sort  of  fish;  and  the  fishermen 
may  quarrel  about  what  the  sea  contained,  if  each 
iregards  his  draught  as  exhaustive.    Yet  the  sea  con- 


TRANSCENDENTALISM 


41 


tained  all  their  catches,  and  also  the  residue,  perhaps 
infinite,  that  escaped  them  all. 

Now  one  net  which  every  intelligent  being  casts 
over  things  is  that  of  his  own  apprehension,  experience, 
and  interests.  He  may  not  reflect  often  on  his  personal 
principle  of  selection  and  arrangement;  he  may  be 
so  interested  in  the  movements  he  sees  through  his 
glass  as  never  to  notice  the  curious  circular  frame, 
perhaps  prismatic,  which  his  glass  imposes  on  the 
landscape.  Yet  among  all  the  properties  of  things, 
the  adventitious  properties  imputed  to  them  in  appre- 
hension are  worth  noting  too;  indeed,  it  chastens 
and  transforms  our  whole  life  if  we  have  once  noted 
them  and  taken  them  to  heart.  Not  that  this  circum- 
stance implies  for  a  moment  what  the  dizziness  of 
idealists  has  inferred,  that  things  exist  only  as  per- 
ceived or  when  we  perceive  them.  What  follows  is 
rather  that,  besides  the  things  and  in  the  most 
interesting  contrast  to  their  movement,  there  is  the 
movement  of  our  minds  in  observing  them.  If,  for 
instance,  I  happen  not  to  know  the  name  of  my 
great-grandfather,  and  am  vexed  at  my  ignorance, 
I  may  search  the  parish  records  and  discover  it, 
together  with  many  circumstances  of  his  life.  This 
does  not  prove  that  my  interest  in  genealogy  created 
my  great-grandfather,  as  a  consistent  egotist  would 
assert;    but  it  does  show  how  my  interest  was  a 


nucleus  for  my  discoveries  and  for  the  terms,  such 
as  great-grandfather,  in  which  I  express  them— for 
it  was  no  intrinsic  property  of  that  worthy  man  that 
he  was  to  become  my  great-grandfather  after  his 
death,  or  that  I  was  to  discover  him. 

This  vortex  which  things,  as  apprehension  catches 
them,  seem  to  form  round  each  whirling  spectator, 
is  the  fascinating  theme  of  lyric  poetry,  of  psycho- 
logical novels,  and  of  German  philosophy.  Dominated 
as  this  philosophy  is  by  the  transcendental  method, 
it  regards  views,  and  the  history  and  logic  of  views, 
as  more  primitive  and  important  than  the  objects 
which  these  views  have  in  common.  The  genial 
Professor  Paulsen  of  Berlin  (whose  pupil  I  once  had 
the  advantage  of  being)  had  a  phrase  that  continually 
recurred  in  his  lectures:  Man  kann  sagen,  as  much 
as  to  say.  Things  will  yield  the  following  picture,  if 
one  cares  to  draw  it.  And  he  once  wrote  an  article 
in  honour  of  Kant  very  pertinently  entitled:  Was 
uns  Kant  sein  kann;  because  no  veritable  disciple 
of  Kant  accepts  what  Kant  taught  as  he  taught  it, 
but  each  rises  from  the  study  of  the  master  having 
irresistibly  formed  one  or  more  systems  of  his  own.  • 
To  take  what  views  we  will  of  things,  if  things  will 
barely  suffer  us  to  take  them,  and  then  to  declare 
that  the  things  are  mere  terms  in  the  views  we  take 
of  them^-that  is  transcendentalism. 


CHAPTER  IV 

HINTS   OF  EGOTISM  IN   GOETHE 

All  transcendentalists  are  preoccupied  with  the  self, 
but  not  all  are  egotists.    Some  regard  as  a  sad  dis- 
ability this  limitation  of  their  knowledge  to  what 
they  have  created;    they  are  humble,  and  almost 
ashamed  to  be  human,  and  to  possess  a  mind  that 
must  cut  them  off  hopelessly  from  all  reality.    On 
the  other  hand  there  are  many  instinctive  egotists 
who  are  not  transcendentalists,  either  because  their 
attention  has  not  been  called  to  this  system,  or 
because  they  discredit  all  speculation,  or  because 
they  see  clearly  that  the  senses  and  the  intellect,  far 
from  cutting  us  off  from  the  real  things  that  surround 
us,  have  the  function  of  adjusting  our  action  to  them 
and  informing  our   mind  about   them.      Such  an 
instinctive  egotist  does  not  allege  that  he  creates 
the  world  by  willing  and  thinking  it,  yet  he  is  more 
interested  in  his  own  sensations,  fancies,  and  pre- 
ferences than  in  the  other  things  in  the  world.    The 
attention  he  bestows  on  things  seems  to  him  to 
bathe  in  light  their  truly  interesting  side.    What  he 
chiefly  considers  is  his  own  experience  —  what  he 

43 


44     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


——KB* 

cared  for  first,  what  second,  what  he  thinks  to-day, 
what  he  wiU  probably  think  to-morrow,  what  friends 
he  has  had,  and  how  they  have  lost  their  charm, 
what  rehgions  he  has  beUeved  in,  and  in  general 
what  contributions  the  universe  has  made  to  him 
and  he  to  the  universe.    His  interest  in  personaUty 
need  not  be  confined  to  his  own;    he  may  have  a 
dramatic  imagination,  and  may  assign  their  appro- 
pnate  personality  to  all  other  people;  every  situation 
he  hears  of  or  invents  may  prompt  him  to  conceive 
the  thrilling  passions  and  pungent  thoughts  of  some 
aker  ego,  in  whom  latent  sides  of  his  own  nature  may 
be  richly  expressed.     And  impersonal  things,   too, 
may  fascinate  him,  when  he  feels  that  they  stir  his 
genius  fruitfully;   and  he  wiU  be  the  more  ready  to 
scatter  his  favours  broadcast  in  that  what  concerns 
him  is  not  any  particular  truth  or  person  (things 
which  might  prove  jealous  and  exclusive),  but  rather 
the  exercise  of  his  own  powers  of  universal  sympathy. 
Something  of  this  sort  seems  to  appear  in  Goethe; 
and  although  his  contact  with  philosophical  egotism' 
was  but  slight,  and  some  of  his  wise  maxims  are 
incompatible  with  it,  yet  his  romanticism,  his  feehng 
for  development  in  everything,  his  private  life,  the 
nebulous  character  of  his  religion,  and  some  of  his 
most   important    works,    like    Faust   and    Wilhelm 
Master,  are  all  so  fuU  of  the  spirit  of  German 


HINTS  OF  EGOTISM  IN  GOETHE        45 


philosophy,  that  it  would  be  a  pity  not  to  draw 
some  illustration  for  our  subject  from  so  pleasant  a 
source. 

There  are  hints  of  egotism  in  Goethe,  but  in  Goethe 
there  are  hints  of  everything,  and  it  would  be  easy 
to  gather  an  imposing  mass  of  evidence  to  the  effect 
that  he  was  not  like  the  transcendentalists,  but  far 
superior  to  them.  For  one  thing  he  was  many-sided, 
not  encyclopaedic;  he  went  out  to  greet  the  variety 
of  things,  he  did  not  pack  it  together.  He  did  not 
even  arrange  the  phases  of  his  experience  (as  he  did 
those  of  Faust)  in  an  order  supposed  to  be  a  progress, 
although,  as  the  commentators  on  Faust  inform  us, 
not  a  progress  in  mere  goodness.  Hegel  might  have 
understood  all  these  moral  attitudes,  and  described 
them  in  a  way  not  meant  to  appear  satirical;  but 
he  would  have  criticised  and  demolished  them,  and 
declared  them  obsolete — -all  but  the  one  at  which 
he  happened  to  stop.  Goethe  loved  them  all;  he 
hated  to  outgrow  them,  and  if  involuntarily  he  did 
so,  at  least  he  still  honoured  the  feelings  that  he  had 
lost.  He  kept  his  old  age  genial  and  green  by  that 
perennial  love.  In  order  to  hold  his  head  above 
water  and  be  at  peace  in  his  own  heart,  he  did  not 
need  to  be  a  Christian,  a  pagan,  or  an  epicurean; 
yet  he  lent  himself  unreservedly,  in  imagination,  to 
Christianity,  paganism,  and  sensuality — three  things 


46     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

your  transcendental  egotist  can  never  stomach:  each 
in  its  way  would  impugn  his  self-sufficiency. 

Nevertheless  the  sympathies  of  Goethe  were  only 
romantic  or  aesthetic;  they  were  based  on  finding  in 
others  an  interesting  variation  from  himself,  an  exotic 
possibiKty,  rather  than  an  identity  with  himself  in 
thought  or  in  fate.  Christianity  was  an  atmosphere 
necessary  to  certain  figures,  that  of  Gretchen,  for 
mstance,  who  would  have  been  frankly  vulgar  with- 
out it;  paganism  was  a  learned  masque,  in  which  one 
could  be  at  once  distinguished  and  emancipated;  and 
sensuality  was  a  sentimental  and  scientific  licence  in 
which  the  free  mind  might  indulge  in  due  season.  The 
sympathy  Goethe  felt  with  things  was  that  of  a  lordly 
observer,  a  traveller,  a  connoisseur,  a  philanderer;  it 
was  egotistical  sympathy. 

Nothing,  for  instance,  was  more  romantic  in  Goethe 
than  his  classicism.  His  Iphigenie  and  his  Helena 
and  his  whole  view  of  antiquity  were  full  of  the 
pathos  of  distance.  That  pompous  sweetness,  that 
intense  moderation,  that  moral  somnambulism  were 
too  intentional;  and  Goethe  felt  it  himself.  In 
Faust^  after  Helen  has  evaporated,  he  makes  the 
hero  revisit  his  native  mountains  and  revert  to  the 
thought  of  Gretchen.  It  is  a  wise  homenroming, 
because  that  craze  for  classicism  which  Helen  sym- 
boHsed  alienated  the  mind  from  real  life  and  led 


HINTS  OF  EGOTISM  IN  GOETHE        47 

only  to  hopeless  imitations  and  lackadaisical  poses, 
Gretchen's  garden,  even  the  Walpurgisnacht^  was  in 
truth  more  classical.  This  is  only  another  way  of 
saying  that  in  the  attempt  to  be  Greek  the  truly 
classical  was  missed  even  by  Goethe,  since  the  truly 
classical  is  not  foreign  to  anybody.  It  is  precisely 
that  part  of  tradition  and  art  which  does  not  alienate 
us  from  our  own  life  or  from  nature,  but  reveals 
them  in  all  their  depth  and  nakedness,  freed  from 
the  fashions  and  hypocrisies  of  time  and  place.  The 
effort  to  reproduce  the  peculiarities  of  antiquity  is  a 
proof  that  we  are  not  its  natural  heirs,  that  we  do 
not  continue  antiquity  instinctively.  People  can 
mimic  only  what  they  have  not  absorbed.  They 
reconstruct  and  turn  into  an  archaeological  masquerade 
only  what  strikes  them  as  outlandish.  The  genuine 
inheritors  of  a  religion  or  an  art  never  dream  of 
reviving  it;  its  antique  accidents  do  not  interest 
them,  an^  its  eternal  substance  they  possess  by 
nature. 

The  Germans  are  not  in  this  position  in  regard  to 
the  ancients.  Whether  sympathetic  like  Goethe,  or 
disparaging  like  Burckhardt,  or  both  at  once,  like 
Hegel,  they  have  seen  in  antiquity  its  local  colour, 
its  mannerisms,  its  documents,  and  above  all  its 
contrasts  with  the  present.  It  was  not  so  while  the 
traditions  of  antiquity  were  still  living  and  authori- 


48     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


I 


tative.  But  the  modems,  and  especially  the  Germans, 
have  not  a  humble  mind.    They  do  not  go  to  school 
with  the  Greeks  unfeignedly,  as  if  Greek  wisdom  might 
possibly  be  true  wisdom,  a  pure  expression  of  ex- 
perience and  reason,  valid  essentially  for  us.    They 
prefer  to  take  that  wisdom  for  a  phase  of  sentiment, 
of  course  outgrown,  but  still  enabling  them  to  recon- 
struct learnedly  the  image   of  a  fascinating  past. 
This  is  what  they  call  giving  vitality  to  classical 
studies,  turning  them  into  Kulturgeschichte.    This  is 
a  vitaKty  lent  by  the  living  to  the  dead,  not  one 
drawn  by  the  young  and  immature  from  a  perennial 
fountain.    In  truth  classical  studies  were  vital  only 
so  long  as  they  were  still  authoritative  morally  and 
set  the  standard  for  letters  and  life.    They  became 
otiose  and  pedantic  when  they  began  to  serve  merely 
to  recover  a  dead  past  in  its  trivial  detail,  and  to 
make  us  grow  sentimental  over  its  remoteness,  its 
beauty,  and  its  ruins. 

How  much  freer  and  surer  was  Goethe's  hand 
when  it  touched  the  cord  of  romanticism!  How 
perfectly  he  knew  the  heart  of  the  romantic  egotist! 
The  romantic  egotist  sets  no  particular  limits  to  the 
range  of  his  interests  and  sympathies;  his  programme 
indeed,  is  to  absorb  the  whole  world.  He  is  no 
wounded  and  disappointed  creature,  like  Byron,  that 
takes  to  sulking  and   naughtiness   because  things 


HINTS  OF  EGOTISM  IN  GOETHE        49 

■  • "  ■  ■   -  ■ 

taste  bitter  in  his  mouth.  He  finds  good  and  evil 
equally  digestible.  The  personal  egotism  of  Byron 
or  of  Musset  after  all  was  humble;  it  knew  how 
weak  it  was  in  the  universe.  But  absolute  egotism 
in  Goethe,  as  in  Emerson,  summoned  all  nature  to 
minister  to  the  self:  all  nature,  if  not  actually  com- 
pelled to  this  service  by  a  human  creative  fiat,  could 
at  least  be  won  over  to  it  by  the  engaging  heroism 
of  her  favourite  child.  In  his  warm  pantheistic  way 
Goethe  felt  the  swarming  universal  Ufe  about  him; 
he  had  no  thought  of  dragooning  it  all,  as  sectarians 
and  nationalists  would,  into  vindicating  some  parti- 
cular creed  or  nation.  Yet  that  fertile  and  impartial 
universe  left  each  life  free  and  in  uncensored  com* 
petition  with  every  other  life.  Each  Creature  might 
feed  blamelessly  on  all  the  others  and  become,  if  it 
could,  the  focus  and  epitome  of  the  world.  The 
development  of  self  was  the  only  duty,  if  only  the 
self  was  developed  widely  and  securely  enough,  with 
insight,  calmness,  and  godlike  irresponsibility. 

Goethe  exhibited  this  principle  in  practice  more 
plainly,  perhaps,  than  in  theory.  His  family,  his 
friends,  his  feelings  were  so  many  stepping-stones 
in  his  moral  career;  he  expanded  as  he  left  them 
behind.  His  love-affairs  were  means  to  the  fuller 
realisation  of  himself.  Not  that  his  love-affairs  were 
sensual  or  his  infidelities  callous ;  far  from  it.    They 


i 


n 


SO    EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


often  stirred  him  deeply  and  unsealed  the  springs 
of  poetry  in  his  heart;    that  was  precisely  their 
function.    Every  tender  passion  opened  before  him 
a  primrose  path  into  which  his  inexorable  genius 
led  him  to  wander.     If  in  passing  he  must  tread 
down  some  flower,  that  was  a  great  sorrow  to  him; 
but  perhaps  that  very  sorrow  and  his  inevitable 
remorse  were  the  most  needful  and  precious  elements 
in  the  experience.  Every  pathetic  sweetheart  in  turn 
was  a  sort  of  Belgium  to  him;  he  violated  her  neu- 
trality with  a  sigh;   his  heart  bled  for  her  innocent 
sufferings,  and  he  never  said  afterwards  in  self- 
defence,  like  the  German  Chancellor,  that  she  was 
no  better  than  she  should  be.   But  he  must  press  on. 
His  beckoning  destiny,  the  claims  of  his  spiritual 
growth,  compelled  him  to  sacrifice  her  and  to  sacrifice 
his  own  lacerated  feelings  on  the  altar  of  duty  to 
his  infinite  self.    Indeed,  so  truly  supreme  was  this 
vocation  that  universal  nature  too,  he  thought,  was 
bound  to  do  herself  some  violence  in  his  behalf  and 
to  grant  him  an  immortal  life,  that  so  noble  a  process 
of  self-expansion  might  go  on  for  ever. 

Goethe's  perfect  insight  into  the  ways  of  romantic 
egotism  appears  also  in  Faust^  and  not  least  in  the 
latter  parts  of  it,  which  are  curiously  prophetic.  If 
the  hero  of  that  poem  has  a  somewhat  incoherent 
character,  soft,  wayward,  emotional,  yet  at  the  same 


HINTS  OF  EGOTISM  IN  GOETHE        51 

time  stubborn  and  indomitable,  that  circumstance 
only  renders  him  the  fitter  vehicle  for  absolute  Will, 
a  metaphysical  entity  whose  business  is  to  be  vigor- 
ous and  endlessly  energetic  while  remaining  perfectly 
plastic.  Faust  was  at  first  a  scholar,  fervid  and  j 
grubbing,  but  so  confused  and  impatient  that  he 
gave  up  science  for  magic.  Notwithstanding  the 
shams  of  professional  people  which  offended  him, 
a  private  and  candid  science  was  possible,  which 
might  have  brought  him  intellectual  satisfaction ; 
and  the  fact  would  not  have  escaped  him  if  he  had 
been  a  simple  lover  of  truth.  But  absolute  Will 
cannot  be  restricted  to  any  single  interest,  much  less 
to  the  pursuit  of  a  frigid  truth  in  which  it  cannot 
believe;  for  the  Will  would  not  be  absolute  if  it- 
recognised  any  truth  which  it  had  to  discover;  it 
can  recognise  and  love  only  the  truth  that  it  makes. 
Its  method  of  procedure,  we  are  told,  consists  in  first 
throwing  out  certain  assumptions,  such  perhaps  as 
that  everything  must  have  a  cause  or  that  life  and 
progress  must  be  everlasting;  and  the  truth  is  then 
whatever  conforms  to  these  assumptions.  But  since 
evidently  these  assumptions  might  be  utterly  false, 
it  is  clear  that  what  interests  absolute  Will  is  not 
truth  at  all,  but  only  orthodoxy.  A  delightful  illus- 
tration of  this  is  given  by  Faust  when,  emulating 
Luther  for  a  moment,  he  undertakes  to  translate  the 


if 


I:  i: 


St     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


first  verse  of  Saint  John— that  being  the  Gospel  that 
impresses  him  most  favourably.  The  point  is  not 
prosaically  to  discover  what  the  Evangelist  meant, 
but  rather  what  he  must  and  shall  have  meant.  The 
Word  will  never  do;  the  Sense  would  be  somewhat 
better;  but  In  the  beginning  was  Force  would  have 
even  more  to  recommend  it.  Suddenly,  however, 
I  what  absolute  Will  demands  flashes  upon  him,  and 
!he  writes  down  contentedly:  In  the  beginning  was 
the  Deed: 

Aiif  einmal  seh'  ich  Rat 

Und  schreibe  getrost:  Im  Anfang  war  die  That  I 

Yet  even  in  this  exciting  form,  the  life  of  thought 
cannot  hold  him  long.  He  aches  to  escape  from  it; 
not  that  his  knowledge  of  the  sciences,  as  well  as  his 
magic,  will  not  accompany  him  through  life ;  he  will 
not  lose  his  acquired  art  nor  his  habit  of  reflection, 
and  in  this  sense  his  career  is  really  a  progress, 
in  that  his  experience  accumulates;  but  the  living 
interest  is  always  something  new.  He  turns  to  mis- 
cellaneous adventures,  not  excluding  love;  from  that 
he  passes  to  imperial  politics,  a  sad  mess,  thence  to 
sentimental  classicism,  rather  an  unreality,  and  finally 
to  war,  to  public  works,  to  trade,  to  piracy,  to  coloni* 
lation,  and  to  clearing  his  acquired  estates  of  tire- 
some old  natives,  who  insist  on  ringing  church  bells 
and  are  impervious  to  the  new  Kultur.  These  public 


HINTS  OF  EGOTISM  IN  GOETHE        53 

enterprises  he  finds  more  satisfying,  perhaps  only 
because  he  dies  in  the  midst  of  them. 

Are  these  hints  of  romantic  egotism  in  Goethe 
mere  echoes  of  his  youth  and  of  the  ambient  philo- 
sophy, echoes  wnicK  he  would  have  rejected  if  con- 
fronted with  them  in  an  abstract  and  doctrinal  form, 
^S  he  rejected  the  system  of  Fichte?  Would  he  not 
have  judged  Schopenhauer  more  kindly  ?  Above  all, 
what  would  he  have  thought  of  Nietzsche,  his  own 
wild  disciple?  No  doubt  he  would  have  wished  to 
buttress  and  qualify  in  a  thousand  ways  that  faith  in 
absolute  Will  which  they  emphasised  so  exclusively, 
Schopenhauer  in  metaphysics  and  Nietzsche  in  morals. 
But  the  same  faith  was  a  deep  element  in  his  own 
genius,  as  in  that  of  his  country,  and  he  would  hardly 
have  disowned  it. 


CHAPTER  V 


SEEDS   OF  EGOTISM  IN   KANT 

Kant  is  remarkable  among  sincere  philosophers  for 
the  pathetic  separation  which  existed  between  his 
personal  beliefs  and  his  ofiicial  discoveries.  His 
personal  belief  were  mild  and  half  orthodox  and 
hardly  differed  from  those  of  Leibniz;  but  officially 
he  was  entangled  in  the  subjective  criticism  of 
knowledge,  and  found  that  the  process  of  knowing 
was  so  complicated  and  so  exquisitely  contrived  to 
make  knowledge  impossible,  thiat  while  the  facts  of 
the  universe  were  there,  and  we  might  have,  like 
Leibniz,  a  shrewd  and  exact  notion  of  what  they 
were,  officially  we  had  no  right  to  call  them  facts 
or  to  allege  that  we  knew  them.  As  there  was  much 
in  Kant's  personal  belief  which  this  critical  method 
of  his  could  not  sanction,  so  there  were  implications 
and  consequences  latent  in  his  critical  method  which 
he  never  absorbed,  being  an  old  man  when  he  adopted 
it.  One  of  these  latent  implications  was  egotism. 

The  fact  that  each  spirit  was  confined  to  its  own 
perceptions  condemned  it  to  an  initial  subjectivity 
and  agnosticism.  What  things  might  exist  besides 
his  ideas  he  could  never  know.    That  such  things 

54 


SEEDS  OF  EGOTISM  IN  KANT 


S5 


existed  was  not  doubted;  Kant  never  accepted  that 
amazing  principle  of  dogmatic  egotism  that  nothing 
is  able  to  exist  unless  I  am  able  to  know  it.  On  the 
contrary  he  assumed  that  human  perceptions,  with 
the  moral  postulates  which  he  added  to  them,  were 
symbols  of  a  real  world  of  forces  or  spirits  existing 
beyond.  This  assumption  reduced  our  initial  idiotism 
to  a  constitutional  taint  of  our  animal  minds,  not 
unlike  original  sin,  and  excluded  that  romantic  pride 
and  self-sufficiency  in  which  a  full-fledged  transcen- 
dentalism always  abounds. 

To  this  contrite  attitude  of  Kant's  agnosticism 
his  personal  character  and  ethics  corresponded.  A 
wizened  little  old  bachelor,  a  sedentary  provincial 
scribe,  scrupulous  and  punctual,  a  courteous  moralist 
who  would  have  us  treat  humanity  in  the  person  of 
another  as  an  end  and  never  merely  as  a  means,  a 
pacifist  and  humanitarian  who  so  revered  the  moral 
sense  according  to  Shaftesbury  and  Adam  Smith 
that,  after  having  abolished  earth  and  heaven,  he 
was  entirely  comforted  by  the  sublime  truth  that 
nevertheless  it  remained  wrong  to  tell  a  lie — such  a 
figure  has  nothing  in  it  of  the  officious  egotist  or  the 
superman.  Yet  his  very  love  of  exactitude  and  his 
scruples  about  knowledge,  misled  by  the  psycho- 
logical fallacy  that  nothing  can  be  an  object  of 
knowledge  except  some  idea  in  the  mind,  led  him 


i 


SEEDS  OF  EGOTISM  IN  KANT 


57 


m  the  end  to  subjectivism;  while  his  rigid  conscience, 
left  standing  in  that  unnatural  void,  led  him  to 
attribute  absoluteness  to  what  he  called  the  cate- 
gorical imperative.  But  this  void  outside  and  this 
absolute  oracle  within  are  germs  of  egotism,  and 
germs  of  the  most  virulent  species. 

The  categorical  imperative,  or  unmistakable  voice 
of   conscience,    was    originally   something    external 
enough— too  external,  indeed,  to  impose  by  itself 
a  moral  obligation.      The  thunders  of  Sinai  and 
the  voice  from  the  whiriwind  in  Job  fetched  their 
authority  from  the  suggestion  of  power;  there  spoke 
an  overwhelming  physical  force  of  which  we  were 
the  creatures  and  the  playthings,  a  voice  which  far 
from  mterpreting  our  sense  of  justice,  or  our  deepest 
hopes,  threatened  to  crush  and  to  flout  them.     If 
some  of  its  commandments  were  moral,  others  were 
ntual  or  even  barbarous;    the  only  moral  sanction 
common  to  them  all  came  from  our  natural  prudence 
and  love  of  life;  our  wisdom  imposed  on  us  the  fear 
of  the  Lord.   The  prophets  and  the  gospel  did  much 
to  identify  this  external  divine  authority  with  the 
human  conscience;   an  identification  which  required 
a  very  elaborate  theory  of  sin  and  punishment  and 
of  existence  in  other  worlds,  since  the  actual  pro- 
cedure of  nature  and  history  can  never  be  squared 
with  any  ideal  of  right. 


In  Kant,  who  in  this  matter  followed  Calvin,  the 
independence  between  the  movement  of  nature,  both 
within  and  without  the  soul,  and  the  ideal  of  right 
was  exaggerated  into  an  opposition.  The  categorical 
imperative  was  always  authoritative,  but  perhaps 
never  obeyed.  The  divine  law  was  far  from  being 
like  the  absolute  Will  in  Fichte,  Hegel,  and  Schopen^ 
hauer,  a  name  for  a  universal  metaphysical  force, 
or  even  for  the  flux  of  material  substance.  On  the 
contrary  the  sublimity  of  the  categorical  imperative 
lay  precisely  in  the  fact  that,  while  matter  and  life 
moved  on  in  their  own  unregenerate  way,  a  principle 
which  they  ought  to  follow,  overarched  and  con- 
demned them,  and  constrained  them  to  condemn 
themselves.  Human  nature  was  totally  depraved 
and  incapable  of  the  least  merit,  nor  had  it  any  power 
of  itself  to  become  righteous.  Its  amiable  spontaneous 
virtues,  having  but  a  natural  motive,  were  splendid 
vices.  Moral  worth  began  only  when  the  will,  trans- 
formed at  the  touch  of  unmerited  grace,  surrendered 
every  impulse  in  overwhelming  reverence  for  the' 
divine  law. 

This  Calvinistic  doctrine  might  seem  to  rebuke 
all  actual  inclinations,  and  far  from  making  the  will 
morally  absolute,  as  egotism  would,  to  raise  over 
against  it  an  alien  authority,  what  ought  to  be  willed. 
Such  was,  of  course,  Kant's  ostensible  intention;  but 


58     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


SEEDS  OF  EGOTISM  IN  KANT 


59 


subKme  as  such  a  situation  was  declared  to  be,  he 
felt  rather  dissatisfied  in  its  presence,  A  categorical 
imperative  crying  in  the  wilderness,  a  duty  which 
nobody  need  listen  to,  or  suflFer  for  disregarding, 
seemed  rather  a  forlorn  authority.  To  save  the  face 
of  absolute  right  another  world  seemed  to  be  required, 
as  in  orthodox  Christianity,  in  which  it  might  be  duly 
vindicated  and  obeyed. 

Kant*s  scepticism,  by  which  all  knowledge  of 
reality  was  denied  us,  played  conveniently  into  the 
hands  of  this  pious  requirement.  If  the  whole  natural 
world,  which  we  can  learn  something  about  by  ex- 
perience, is  merely  an  idea  in  our  minds,  nothing 
prevents  any  sort  of  real  but  unknown  world  from 
lying  about  us  unawares.  What  could  be  more 
plausible  and  opportune  than  that  the  categorical 
imperative  which  the  human  mind,  the  builder  of 
this  visible  world,  had  rejected,  should  in  that  other 
real  world  be  the  head  stone  of  the  corner  ? 

This  happy  thought,  had  it  stood  alone,  might 
have  seemed  a  little  fantastic;  but  it  was  only  a 
laboured  means  of  re-establishing  the  theology  of 
Leibniz,  in  which  Kant  privately  believed,  behind 
the  transcendental  idealism  which  he  had  put  forward 
professorially.  The  dogmatic  system  from  which  he 
started  seemed  to  him,  as  it  stood,  largely  inde- 
fensible and  a  little  oppressive.     To  purify  it  he 


adopted  a  fallacious  principle  of  criticism,  namely, 
that  our  ideas  are  all  we  can  know,  a  principle  which^ 
if  carried  out,  would  undermine  that  whole  system, 
and  every  other.  He,  therefore,  hastened  to  adopt 
a  corrective  principle  of  reconstruction,  no  less  fal- 
lacious, namely,  that  conscience  bids  us  assume 
certain  things  to  be  realities  which  reason  and  ex- 
perience know  nothing  of.  This  brought  him  round 
to  a  qualified  and  ambiguous  form  of  his  original 
dogmas,  to  the  effect  that  although  there  was  no 
reason  to  think  that  God,  heaven,  and  free-will  exist, 
we  ought  to  act  as  if  they  existed,  and  might  call 
that  wilful  action  of  ours  faith  in  their  existence. 

Thus  in  the  philosophy  of  Kant  there  was  a  stimu- 
lating ambiguity  in  the  issue.  He  taught  rather  less 
than  he  secretly  believed,  and  his  disciples,  seizing 
the  principle  of  his  scepticism,  but  lacking  his  con- 
servative instincts,  believed  rather  less  than  he  taught 
them.  Doubtless  in  his  private  capacity  Kant  hoped, 
if  he  did  not  believe,  that  God,  free-will,  and  another 
life  subsisted  in  fact,  as  every  believer  had  hitherto 
supposed;  it  was  only  the  method  of  proving  their 
reality  that  had  been  illegitimate.  For  no  matter  how 
strong  the  usual  arguments  might  seem  (and  they 
did  not  seem  very  strong)  they  could  convey  no 
transcendent  assurance;  on  the  contrary,  the  more 
proofs   you   draw   for   anything   from   reason   and 


ii 


6o     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


experience,  the  better  you  prove  that  that  thing  is 
a  mere  idea  in  your  mind.    It  was  almost  prudent, 
so  to  speak,  that  God,  freedom,  and  immortality,  if 
they  had  claims  to  reality,  should  refnain  without 
witness  in   the  sphere  of  "knowledge,'^  as   inad- 
vertently  or  ironically  it  was  still  called;    but  to 
circumvent  this  compulsory  lack  of  evidence  God 
had  at  least  implanted  in  us  a  veridical  conscience, 
which  if  it  took  itself  seriously  (as  it  ought  to  do, 
being  a  conscience)  would  constrain  us  to  postulate 
what,  though  we  could  never  "  know  "  it,  happened 
to  be  the  truth.   Such  was  the  way  in  which  the  good 
Kant  thought  to  play  hide-and-seek  with  reality. 

The   momentum   of  his   transcendental   method, 
however,  led  to  a  very  different  and  quite  egotistical 
conclusion.      An   adept   in   transcendentaUsm   can 
hardly  suppose  that  God,  free-wiU,  and  heaven,  even 
if  he  postulates  them,  need  exist  at  all.    Existence, 
for  him,  is  an  altogether  inferior  category.    Even  a 
specific  moral  law,  thundering  unalterable  maxims 
must  seem  to  him  a  childish  notion.    What  the  ego' 
postulates  is  nothmg  fixed  and  already  existing,  but 
only  such  ideal  terms  as,  for  the  moment,  express 
Its  attitude.    If  it  is  striving  to  remember,  it  posits 
a  past;   if  it  is  planning,  it  posits  a  future;   if  it  is 
consciously  eloquent,  it  posits  an  audience.     These 
things  do  not  and  cannot  exist  otherwise  than  in 


SEEDS  OF  EGOTISM  IN  KANT 


6i 


their  capacity  of  things  posited  by  the  ego.  All, 
therefore,  that  the  categorical  imperative  can  mean 
for  the  complete  transcendentalist  is  that  he  should 
live  as  if  all  things  were  real  which  are  imaginatively 
requisite  for  him,  if  he  is  to  live  hard:  this  intensity 
of  life  in  him  being  itself  the  only  reality.  At  that 
stage  of  development  at  which  Kant  found  himself, 
God,  freedom,  and  immortality  may  have  been 
necessary  postulates  of  practicM  reason.  But  to 
suppose  that  these  imagined  objects,  therefore, 
existed  apart  from  the  excellent  philosopher  whose 
conscience  had  not  yet  transcended  them,  would  be 
not  to  have  profited  by  his  teaching.  It  would  be 
merely  to  repeat  it.  A  later  and  more  advanced 
transcendentalist,  instead  of  God,  freedom,  and 
immortality,  might  just  as  dutifully  posit  matter^ 
empire,  and  the  beauty  of  a  warrior's  death.  His 
conscience  might  no  longer  be  an  echo  of  Chris- 
tianity, but  the  trumpet-blast  of  a  new  heathenism. 
It  is  for  the  ego  who  posits  to  judge  what  it  should 
posit. 

^  The  postulates  of  practical  reason,  by  which  Kant 
hoped  to  elude  the  subjectivity  which  he  attributed 
to  knowledge,  are  no  less  subjective  than  knowledge, 
and  far  more  private  and  variable.  The  senses  and 
the  intellect,  if  they  deceive  us,  seem  to  deceiVf  us 
all  in  much  the  same  way,  and  the  dream  they 


62     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


plunge  us  into  in  common  seems  to  unite  us;  but 
what  obscurity,  diversity,  hostiKty  in  the  ideals  of 
our  hearts!  The  postulates  that  were  intended  to 
save  the  Kantian  philosophy  from  egotism  are  the 
most  egotistical  part  of  it.  In  the  categorical  im- 
perative we  see  something  native  and  inwird  to  the 
private  soul,  in  some  of  its  moods,  quietly  claiming 
to  rule  the  invisible  world,  to  set  God  on  his  throne 
and  open  eternity  to  the  human  spirit.  The  most 
subjective  of  feelings,  the  feeling  of  what  ought  to  be, 
legislates  for  the  universe.  Egotism  could  hardly  go 
further. 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  categorical  imperative,  not 
satisfied  with  proclaiming  itself  secretly  omnipotent, 
proclaims  itself  openly  ruthless.  Kant  expressly  re- 
pudiated as  unworthy  of  a  virtuous  will  any  con- 
sideration of  happiness,  or  of  consequences,  either 
to  cmeself  or  to  others.  He  was  personally  as  mild 
and  kindly  as  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield  (whose  goodness 
he  denied  to  be  moral  because  it  was  natural),  but 
his  moral  doctrine  was  in  principle  a  perfect  frame 
for  fanaticism.  Give  back,  as  time  was  bound  to  give 
back,  a  little  flesh  to  this  skeleton  of  duty,  make  it 
the  voice  not  of  a  remote  Mosaic  decalogue,  but  of  a 
rich  temperament  and  a  young  life,  and  you  will  have 
saiMified  beforehand  every  stubborn  passion  and 
every  romantic  crime.    In  the  guise  of  an  infallible 


SEEDS  OF  EGOTISM  IN  KANT 


63 


conscience,  before  which  nothing  has  a  right  to  stand, 
egotism  is  launched  upon  its  irresponsible  career. 

The  categorical  imperative,  as  Kant  personally  con- 
ceived it,  was  that  of  the  conscience  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  which  had  become  humanitarian  without 
ceasing  to  be  Christian,  the  conscience  of  the  Puritans 
passing  into  that  of  Rousseau.  But  the  categorical 
principle  in  morals,  like  the  ego  in  logic,  can  easily 
migrate.  If  to-day  you  are  right  in  obeying  your 
private  conscience  against  all  considerations  of  pru- 
dence or  kindness  (though  you  are  prudent  and  kind 
by  nature,  so  that  this  loyalty  to  a  ruthless  Duty  is 
a  sacrifice  for  you),  to-morrow  you  may  be  right  in 
obeying  the  categorical  imperative  of  your  soul  in 
another  phase,  and  to  carry  out  no  matter  what  irre- 
sponsible enterprise,  though  your  heart  may  bleed 
at  the  victims  you  are  making.  The  principle  of 
fanaticism  is  present  in  either  case;  and  Kant 
provides,  in  his  transcendental  agnosticism,  a  means 
of  cutting  off  aU  protests  from  experience  or  common 
sense,  or  a  more  enlightened  self-interest.  These 
protests,  he  thinks,  are  not  only  ignoble,  but  they 
come  from  a  deluded  mind,  since  the  world  they 
regard  is  a  creature  of  the  imagination,  whereas  the 
categorical  imperative,  revealed  to  the  inner  man, 
is  a  principle  prior  to  all  worlds  and,  therefore,  not 
to  be  corrected  by  any  suasion  which  this  particular 


6+     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


world,  now  imagined  by  us,  might  try  to  exercise  on 
our  free  minds. 

Thus  it  is  from  Kant,  directly  or  indirectly,  that 
tht  German  egotists  draw  the  conviction  which  is 
their  most  tragic  error.  Their  self-assertion  and 
ambition  are  ancient  follies  of  the  human  race;  but 
they  think  these  vulgar  passions  the  creative  spirit 
of  the  universe.  Kant,  or  that  soul  within  Kant 
which  was  still  somewhat  cramped  in  its  expression, 
was  the  prophet  and  even  the  founder  of  the  new 
German  religion. 


CHAPTER  VI 


TRANSCENDENTALISM   PERFECTED 

FiCHTE  purified  the  system  of  Kant  of  all  its  incon- 
sistent and  humane  elements;  he  set  forth  the  sub- 
jective system  of  knowledge  and  action  in  its  frankest 
and  most  radical  form.  The  ego,  in  order  to  live  a 
full  and  free  Ufe,  posited  or  feigned  a  world  of  circum* 
stances,  in  the  midst  of  which  it  might  disport  itself; 
but  this  imagined  theatre  was  made  to  suit  the  play, 
and  though  it  might  seem  to  oppress  the  Will  with 
all  sorts  of  hindrances,  and  even  to  snuff  it  out 
altogether,  it  was  really  only  a  mirage  which  that 
Will,  being  wiser  than  it  knew,  had  raised  in  order 
to  enjoy  the  experience  of  exerting  itself  manfully. 

It  would  seem  obvious*  from  this  that  the  Will 
could  never  be  defeated,  and  that  in  spite  of  its 
name  it  was  identical  with  destiny  or  the  laws  of 
nature:  and  those  transcendentalists  who  lean  to 
naturalism,  or  pass  into  it  unawares,  like  Schelling 
or  Emerson,  actually  understand  the  absolute  Will 
in  this  way.  But  not  so  Fichte,  nor  what  I  take 
to  be  the  keener  and  more  heroic  romantic  school, 

whose  last  prophet  was  Nietzsche.    The  Germans,  in 

65  .  ji 


66     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


the  midst  of  their  fantastic  metaphysics,  sometimes 
surprise  us  by  their  return  to  immediate  experience : 
after  all,  it  was  in  wrestling  with  the  Lord  that  their 
philosophy  was  begotten.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
will  is  often  defeated — especially  if  we  are  stubborn 
in  defining  our  will;  and  this  tragic  fact  by  no  means 
refutes  the  Fichtean  philosophy,  which  knows  how 
to  deal  with  it  heroically.  It  conceives  that  what  is 
inviolable  is  only  what  ought  to  be,  the  unconscious 
plan  or  idea  of  perfect  living  which  is  hidden  in  the 
depths  of  all  life :  a  will  not  animated  in  some  measure 
by  this  idea  cannot  exist,  or  at  least  cannot  be  noticed 
or  respected  by  this  philosophy.  But  when,  where, 
how  often  and  how  far  this  divine  idea  shall  be  carried 
out  is  left  unexplained.  Actual  will  may  be  feeble 
or  wicked  in  any  degree;  and  in  consequence  the 
world  that  ought  to  be  evoked  in  its  maximum  con- 
ceivable richness,  may  dwindle  and  fade  to  nothing. 
The  Will  may  accordingly  be  defeated;  not,  indeed, 
by  imagined  external  things,  but  by  its  own  apathy 
and  tergiversation.  In  this  case,  according  to  the 
logic  of  this  system  (which  is  as  beautifully  thought 
out  as  that  of  Plotinus),  the  dissolving  world  will 
appear  to  be  overwhelmingly  formidable  and  real. 
In  expiring  because  we  have  no  longeyr  the  warmth 
fo  keep  it  alive,  it  will  seem  to  be  killing  us;  for  the 
passivity  of  the  ego,  says  Fichte,  is  posited  as  activity 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  PERFECTED     67 


in  the  non-ego.  That  way  of  speaking  is  scholastic; 
but  the  thought,  if  we  take  the  egotistical  point  of 
view,  is  deep  and  true. 

So  any  actual  will  may  perish  by  defect  and  die 
out;  but  actual  will  may  also  perish  by  sublimation. 
The  true  object  of  absolute  Will  is  not  things  or 
pleasures  or  length  of  life,  but  willing  itself;  and  the 
more  intense  and  disinterested  this  willing  is,  the 
better  it  manifests  absolute  Will.  The  heroic  act  of 
dashing  oneself  against  overwhelming  obstacles  may, 
therefore,  be  the  highest  fulfilment  of  the  divine  idea; 
The  will  dares  to  perish  in  order  to  have  dared  every- 
thing. In  its  material  ruin  it  remains  ideally  victorious. 
If  we  consider  the  matter  under  the  form  of  eternity, 
we  shall  see  that  this  heroic  and  suicidal  will  has 
accomplished  what  it  willed;  it  has  not  only  lived 
perilously  but  perished  nobly. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  how  completely 
this  theory  justifies  any  desperate  enterprise  to  which 
one  happens  to  be  wedded.  It  justifies,  for  instance, 
any  wilful  handling  of  history  and  science.  The  Will 
by  right  lays  down  the  principles  on  which  things 
must  and  shall  be  arranged.  If  things  slip  somehow 
from  the  traces,  so  much  the  grander  your  "  scientific 
deed  "  in  striving  to  rein  them  in.  After  all,  you  first 
summoned  them  into  being  only  that  you  might 
drive  them.   If  they  seem  to  run  wild  and  upset  you, 


68  •  EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


I 


like  the  steeds  of  Hippolytus,  you  will,  at  least,  not 
have  missed  the  glory,  while  you  lived  and  drove, 
of  assuming  the  attitude  of  a  master.  Call  spirits 
from  the  vasty  deep:  if  they  do  not  come,  what  of 
it  I  That  will  only  prove  the  absolute  self-sufficiency 
of  your  duty  to  call  them. 

What  tighten^L  this  speculative  bond  between 
Fichte  and  the  Nietzschean  school  is  that  he  himself 
applied  his  theory  of  absolute  Will  to  national  life. 
This  ego,  which  was  identical  with  mind  in  general, 
he  identified  also  with  the  German  people.  If  the 
Germans  suflEered  their  national  will  to  be  domes- 
ticated in  the  Napoleonic  empire,  the  creative  spirit 
of  the  universe  would  be  extinguished,  and  God 
himself,  who  existed  only  when  incarnate  in  man- 
kind, would  disappear.  It  was  evidently  one's  duty 
to  prevent  this  if  possible;  and  Fichte  poured  out 
all  the  vehemence  of  his  nature  into  the  struggle  for 
freedom.  The  mere  struggle,  the  mere  protest  in  the 
soul,  according  to  his  system,  would  secure  the  end 
desired:  self-assertion,  not  material  success,  was  the 
goal.  A  happy  equilibrium  once  established  in  human 
life  would  have  been  only  a  temptation,  a  sort  of 
Napoleonic  or  Mephistophelian  quietus  falling  on  the 
will  to  strive. 

I  am  not  sure  how  far  Fichte,  in  his  romantic  and 
puritan   tension  of  soul,  would   have   relished  the 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  PERFECTED     69 

present  organisation  of  Germany.  He  was  a  man 
of  the  people,  a  radical  and  an  agitator  as  much  as 
a  prophet  of  nationalism,  and  the  shining  armour  in 
which  German  freedom  is  now  encased  might  have 
seemed  to  him  too  ponderous.  He  might  have  dis- 
cerned in  victory  the  beginning  of  corruption. 

Nevertheless  we  should  remember  that  a  perfected 
idealism  has  a  tendency  to  change  into  its  opposite 
and  become  a  materialism  for  all  practical  purposes. 
Absolute  Will  is  not  a  natural  being,  not  anybody's 
will  or  thought;  it  is  a  disembodied  and  unrealised 
genius  which  first  comes  into  operation  when  it  begins 
to  surround  itself  with  objects  and  points  of  resistance, 
so  as  to  become  aware  of  its  own  stress  and  vocation. 
What  these  objects  or  felt  resistances  may  be  is  not 
prejudged;  or  rather  it  is  prejudged  that  they  shall 
be  most  opposite  to  spirit,  and  that  spirit  shall  ex- 
perience its  own  passivity— one  mode  of  its  fated  and 
requisite  experience — ^in  the  form  of  an  influence 
which  it  imputes  to  dead  and  material  things. 

The  whole  business  of  spirit  may,  therefore,  well 
be  with  matter.  Science  might  be  mechanical,  art 
might  be  cumbrous  and  material,  all  the  instruments 
of  life  might  be  brutal,  life  itself  might  be  hard, 
bitter,  and  obsessed,  and  yet  the  whole  might  remain 
a  direct  manifestation  of  pure  spirit,  absolute  free- 
dom, and  creative  duty.    This  speculative  possibility 


70     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


is  worth  noting:  it  helps  us  to  understand  modem 
Gennany.    It  is  no  paradox  that  idealists  should  be 
so  much  at  home  among  material  things.     These 
material  things,  according  to  them,  are  the  offspring 
of  their  spirit.  Why  should  they  not  sink  fondly  into 
the  manipulation  of  philological  details  or  chemical 
elements,  or  over-ingenious  commerce  and  intrigue? 
Why  should  they  not  dote  on  blood  and  iron  ?   Why 
should  these  fruits  of  the  spirit  be  uncongenial  to  it  ? 
A  theoretical  materialist,  who  looks  on  the  natural 
world  as  on  a  soU  that  he  has  risen  from  and  feeds 
on,  may  perhaps  feel  a  certain  piety  towards  those 
obscure  abysses  of  nature  that  have  given  him  birth; 
but  his  delight  will  be  rather  in  the  clear  things  of 
the  imagination,  in  the  humanities,  by  which  the 
rude  forces  of  nature  are  at  once  expressed  and 
eluded.   Not  so  the  transcendentalist.   Regarding  his 
mind  as  the  source  of  everything,  he  is  moved  to 
solemn  silence  and  piety  only  before  himself:    on 
the  other  hand,  what  bewitches  him,  what  he  loves 
to  fondle,  is  his  progeny,  the  material  environment, 
the  facts,  the  laws,  the  blood,  and  the  iron  in  which 
he  conceives  (quite  truly,  perhaps)  that  his  spirit 
perfectiy  and  freely  expresses  itself.    To  despise  the 
world  and  withdraw  into  the  realm  of  mind,  as  into 
a  subtier  and  more  congenial  sphere,  is  quite  contrary 
to  his  idealism.     Such  a  retreat  might  bring  him 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  PERFECTED     71 


peace,  and  he  wants  war.  His  idealism  teaches  him 
that  strife  and  contradiction,  as  Heraclitus  said,  are 
the  parents  of  all  things ;  and  if  he  stopped  striving, 
if  he  grew  sick  of  ambition  and  material  goods,  he 
thinks  he  would  be  forsaking  life,  for  he  hates  as  he 
would  deafii  what  another  kind  of  idealists  have 
called  salvation. 

We  are  told  that  God,  when  he  had  made  the 
world,  found  it  very  good,  and  the  transcendentalist, 
when  he  assumes  the  Creator's  place,  follows  his 
example.  The  hatred  and  fear  of  matter  is  perhaps 
not  a  sign  of  a  pure  spirit.  Even  contemplatively,  a 
divine  mind  may  perfectly  well  fall  in  love  with 
matter,  as  the  Moon-goddess  did  with  Endymion. 
Such  matter  might  be  imagined  only,  as  if  Diana 
had  merely  dreamt  of  her  swain ;  and  the  fond  image 
might  not  be  less  dear  on  that  account.  The  romantic 
poet  finds  his  own  spirit  greeting  him  in  rocks,  clouds, 
and  waves ;  the  musician  pours  out  his  soul  in  move- 
ment and  tumult;  why  should  not  the  transcendental 
general,  or  engineer,  or  commercial  traveller  find  his 
purest  ideal  in  trade,  crafts,  and  wars  ?  Grim  work, 
above  all,  is  what  absolute  Will  demands.  It  needs 
the  stimulus  of  resistance  to  become  more  intensely 
conscious  of  Self,  which  is  said  to  be  its  ultimate 
object  in  imagining  a  world  at  all.  Acquisition 
interests  it  more  than  possession,  because  the  sense 


of  effort  and  power  is  then  more  acute.    The  more 
material  the  arts  that  engage  it,  and  the  more  com- 
plicated and  worldly  its  field  of  action,  the  more 
intense  will  be  its  exertion,  and  the  greater  its  joy. 
This  is  no  idealism  for  a  recluse  or  a  moping  poet; 
it  does  not  feel  itself  to  be  something  incidental  and 
fugitive  in  the  world,  like  a  bird's  note,  that  it  should 
fear  to  be  drowned  in  the  crash  of  material  instru- 
ments or  to  be  forced  to  a  hideous  tension  and  shrill- 
ness:  shriUness  and  tension  are  its  native  element. 
It  is  convinced  that  it  has  composed  all  the  move- 
ments there  are  or  can  be  in  existence,  and  it  feels 
all  the  more  masterful,   the   more  numerous   and 
thunderous  is  the  orchestra  it  leads.     It  is  entirely 
at  home  in  a  mechanical  environment,  which  it  can 
prove  transcendentally  to  be  perfectly  ideal.      Its 
most  congenial  work  is  to  hack  its  way  through  to 
the  execution  of  its  Worid-Plan.    Its  most  adequate 
and  soul-satisfying  expression  is  a  universal  battle. 


CHAPTER  VII 

FICHTE    ON   THE    MISSION    OF   GERMANY 

When  the  ancient  Jews  enlarged  their  conception 
of  Jehovah  so  as  to  recognise  in  him  the  only  living 
God  to  whom  all  nature  and  history  were  subject, 
they  did  not  cease  to  regard  the  universal  power  as 
at  the  same  time  their  special  national  deity.  Here 
was  a  latent  contradiction.  It  was  ingeniously  re- 
moved by  saying  that  Jehovah,  while  not  essentially 
a  tribal  deity,  had  chosen  Israel  for  his  people  by  a 
free  act  of  grace  with  no  previous  merit  on  their  part; 
so  that  the  pride  of  the  Jews  was  not  without  humility. 
No  humility,  however,  is  mingled  with  the  claim 
which  the  Germans  now  make  to  a  similar  pre- 
eminence. "  Modern  critics,"  says  Max  Stimer, 
"inveigh  against  religion  because  it  sets  up  God^ 
the  divine,  or  the  moral  law  over  against  man> 
regarding  them  as  external  things,  whereas  the  critics 
transform  all  these  objects  into  ideas  in  the  human 
mind.  Nevertheless  the  essential  mistake  of  religion,, 
to  assign  a  mission  to  man  at  all,  is  not  avoided  by 
these  critics,  who  continue  to  insist  that  man  shall 
be  divine,  or  ideally  human,  or  what  not;   morality^ 

73 


ii,i 


74     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


THE  MISSION  OF  GERMANY 


75 


freedom,  humanity,  etc.,  are  his  essence."     Now  a 
divinity  which  is  subjective  or  immanent  evidently 
cannot  choose  any  nation,  save  by  dwelling  and 
manifesting  itself  more  particularly  in  them.    They 
can  be  highly  favoured  only  in  that  they  are  intrin- 
sically superior,  and  on  that  account  may  be  figura- 
tively called  vessels  of  election.     Therefore,  if  the 
spirit  which  is  in  a  nation  is  not  one  spirit  among 
many  in  the  world  (as  the  primitive  Hebrews  supposed 
and  as  a  naturalistic  philosophy  would  maintain),  but 
is  the  one  holy  and  universal  spirit,  and  if  at  the 
same  time  this  spirit   dwells  in   that  nation  pre- 
eminently, or  even  exclusively,  humility  on  the  part 
of  this   nation   would   evidently   be   out   of  place. 
Accordingly,    the    Germans    cannot    help    bearing 
witness    to    the    divine    virtues    and    prerogatives 
which  they  find  in  themselves,  some  of  which  are 
set  forth  by  Fichte  as  follows : 

The  present  age  stands  precisely  in  the  middle  of 
earthly  time,  between  the  era  in  which  men  were 
still  self-seeking,  earthly,  and  impulsive,  and  the 
coming  era  in  which  they  will  live  for  the  sake  of 
pure  ideals.  The  Germans  prefigure  this  better  age, 
and  are  leading  the  rest  of  the  world  into  it.  They 
have  created  the  modem  world  by  uniting  the 
political  heritage  of  classical  Europe  with  the  true 
religion  that  lingered  in  Asia,  and  they  have  raised 


the  two  to  a  higher  unity  in  their  Kultur.  From 
them  is  drawn  the  best  blood  of  most  other  nations 
and  the  spiritual  force  that  has  fashioned  them  alL 

The  Germans  have  never  forsaken  their  native 
land  nor  suffered  seriously  from  immigration.  Their 
language  is  primitive,  and  they  have  never  exchanged 
it  for  a  foreign  one.  Hence  German  alone  is  truly  a 
mother-tongue.  Its  intellectual  terms  retain  a  vital 
and  vivid  connection  with  sensible  experience.  True 
poetry  and  philosophy,  therefore,  exist  only  in  Ger- 
man. Captious  persons  who  judge  by  mere  crude 
feeling  may  fancy  that  German  is  not  very  melodious; 
but  these  matters  cannot  be  rightly  judged  without 
reference  to  first  principles,  which  in  this  case  would 
prove  that  the  sweetest  language  is  that  which 
exhausts  all  possible  sounds  and  combines  them  in 
all  available  ways.  Whether  German  or  some  other 
language  comes  nearest  to  this  a  priori  ideal  of 
euphony  must  be  left  for  empirical  observation  to 
decide. 

The  German  nature,  being  pure,  deep,  earnest, 
and  bold,  has  instinctively  seized  upon  the  true 
essence  of  Christianity  and  discarded  with  abhorrence 
all  the  lies  and  corruption  that  obscured  it.  This 
essence  is  the  imperative  need  of  turning  from  the 
i^atural  to  the  ideal  life.  The  German  knows  that 
his  own  soul  is  safe;   but  this  is  not  enough  for  him 


76     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


THE  MISSION  OF  GERMANY 


77 


( 


f 


in  his  unselfishness.     His  zeal  is  kindled  easily  for 
warmth  and  light  everywhere;   and  this  zeal  of  his 
is  patient  and  efficacious,  taking  hold  on  real  life 
and  transforming  it.    As  he  presses  on  he  finds  more 
than  he  sought,  for  he  has  plunged  into  the  quick 
stream  of  life  which  forges  ahead  of  itself  and  carries 
him  forward  with  it.  The  dead  heart  of  other  nations 
may  dream  of  gods  in  the  clouds,  or  of  some  perfect 
type  of  human  life  already  exemplified  in  the  past 
and  only  to  be  approached  or  repeated  in  the  future. 
The  spirit  of  the  German  is  no  coinage  of  earth;   it 
is  the  living  source  of  all  the  suns,  and  rushes  to 
create  absolutely  new  things  for  ever.    The  German 
mind  is  the  self-consciousness  of  God. 

I  do  not  see  that  the  strain  of  war  or  the  intoxica- 
tion of  victory  could  add  much  to  these  boasts, 
uttered  by  Fichte  when,  for  the  moment,  he  had 
abandoned  all  hope  of  military  self-assertion  on  the 
part  of  his  country,  and  relied  on  education  and 
philosophy  alone  to  preserve  and  propagate  German 
righteousness.     Even  in  detail,  what  he  says  often 
seems  strangely  like  what  official  Germany  is  now 
saying.     Even  the  hysterical  hatred  of  England  is 
not  absent.      In  England  Fichte  did  not  see  the 
champion  of  Protestantism,  morality,  and  political 
liberty,  nor  the  constant  foe  of  Napoleon,  but  only 
a  universal  commercial  vampire.    His  contempt  for 


the  Latin  races,  too,  was  boundless.  In  the  matter 
of  race,  indeed,  he  entertained  a  curious  idea  that 
there  must  have  been,  from  all  eternity  until  the 
beginning  of  history,  a  primitive  Normal  People,  a 
tribe  of  Adams  and  Eves;  because  accor^ng  to  a 
principle  which  he  adopted  from  Calvinistic  theology, 
if  all  men  had  been  originally  slaves  to  nature  none 
could  ever  have  become  free.  This  Normal  People 
were,  of  course,  the  ancestors  of  the  Germans.  Earth- 
born  savage  tribes  must  have  existed  also  for  the 
Normal  People  to  subdue,  since  but  for  some  such 
conquest  the  primitive  equilibrium  would  never  have 
been  broken,  Eden  and  the  jungle  would  never  have 
been  merged  together,  and  history,  which  is  a  record 
of  novelties,  would  never  have  begun.  The  theory 
of  evolution  has  rendered  the  reasons  for  such  a 
view  obsolete;  but  the  idea  that  the  bulk  of  man- 
kind are  mongrels  formed  by  the  union  of  blonde  god- 
like creatures  with  some  sort  of  anthropoid  blacks, 
recurred  later  in  Gobineau  and  has  had  a  certain 
vogue  in  Germany. 

Fichte,  following  Calvin  and  Kant,  made  a  very 
sharp  distinction  between  the  life  of  nature  and  that 
of  duty.  The  ideal  must  be  pursued  without  the 
least  thought  of  advantage.  Trades,  he  says,  must 
be  practised  spontaneously,  without  any  other  reward 
than  longer  vigils.     The  young  must  never  hear  it 


I 


78     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

mentioned  that  any  one  could  ever  he  incited  or 
guided  in  life  by  the  thought  of  his  own  preservation 
or  well-being.  Knowledge  is  no  report  of  existing 
things  or  laws  which  have  happened  to  be  discovered. 
Knowledge  is  the  very  Kfe  of  God,  and  self-generated. 
It  is  "  an  intellectual  activity  for  its  own  sake,  accord- 
ing to  rules  for  their  own  sake."  In  plain  EngUsh,  it 
is  pure  imagination.  But  the  method  to  be  imposed 
on  this  madness  is  fixed  innately,  both  for  thought 
and  for  morals.  Only  frivolity  can  interfere  with  a 
unanimous  idealism. 

We  must  not  suppose  that  this  prescription  of 

austere  and  abstract  aims  implies  any  aversion  on 

Fichte's  part  to  material  progress,  compulsory  Kultur, 

or  military  conquest.    German  idealism,  as  we  have 

seen,  is  not  Platonic  or  ascetic,  that  it  should  leave 

the  world  behind.    On  the  contrary,  its  mission  is  to 

consecrate  the  world  and  show  that  every  part  of  it 

is  an  organ  of  the  spirit.  This  is  a  form  of  piety  akin 

to  the  Hebraic.     Even  the  strictest  Calvinists,  who 

taught  that  the  world  was  totally  depraved,  were 

able,  in  every  sense  of  the  phrase,  to  make  a  very 

good  thing  of  it.   They  reclaimed,  they  appropriated, 

they  almost  enjoyed  it.   So  Fichte  gives  us  prophetic 

glimpses  of  an  idealistic  Germany  conquering  the 

world.    The  state  does  not  aim  at  self-preservation, 

still  less  is  it  concerned  to  come  to  the  aid  of  those 


THE  MISSION  OF  GERMANY 


79 


members  of  the  human  family  that  lag  behind  the 
movement  of  the  day.  The  dominion  of  unorganised 
physical  force  must  be  abolished  by  a  force  obedient 
to  reason  and  spirit.  True  life  consists  in  refashioning 
human  relations  after  a  model  innate  in  the  mind. 
The  glorious  destiny  of  Germany  is  to  bring  forth 
and  establish  the  world  anew.  Natural  freedom  is  a 
disgraceful  thing,  a  mere  medley  of  sensual  and 
intellectual  impulses  without  any  principle  of  order. 
It  is  for  the  Germans  to  decide  whether  a  providential 
progress  exists  by  becoming  themselves  the  provi- 
dence that  shall  bring  progress  about,  or  whether  on 
the  contrary  every  higher  thought  is  folly.  If  they 
should  fail,  history  would  never  blame  them,  for  in 
that  case  there  would  be  no  more  history. 

The  sole  animating  principle  of  history  is  the 
tendency  towards  a  universal  Qiristian  European 
monarchy.  This  tendency  is  deeper  than  the  plans 
of  men  and  stronger  than  their  intentions.  "  That 
a  state,  even  when  on  the  very  point  of  making  war, 
should  solemnly  assert  its  love  of  peace  and  its  aversion 
to  conquest,  is  nothing;  for  in  the  first  place  it  must 
needs  make  this  asseveration  and  so  hide  its  real 
intention  if  it  would  succeed  in  its  design;  and  the 
well-known  principle  Threaten  war  that  thou  mayst 
have  peace  may  also  be  inverted  in  this  way:  Promise 
feace  that  thou  mayst  begin  war  with  advantage  ;  and 


8o     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


THE  MISSION  OF  GERMANY 


8i 


I 


in  the  second  place  the  state  may  be  wholly  in 
earnest  in  its  peaceful  assurances,  so  far  as  its  self- 
knowledge  has  gone;  but  let  the  favourable  oppor- 
tunity for  aggrandisement  present  itself,  and  the 
previous  good  resolution  is  forgotten." 

If  the  people  are  disinclined  to  obey  the  Idea,  the 
government  must  constrain  them  to  do  so.  All  the 
powers  of  all  the  citizens  must  be  absorbed  in  the 
state.  Personal  liberty  could  be  turned  to  no  good 
use  when  such  individuality  and  variety  of  training 
as  are  good  for  the  state  have  been  provided  for  by 
its  regulations.  Nor  must  any  idleness  be  tolerated. 
An  ideal  education  must  make  men  over  so  that 
they  shall  be  incapable  of  willing  anything  but  what 
that  education  wills  them  to  v^.  The  state  may 
then  rely  upon  its  subjects,  "  for  whoever  has  a  well- 
grounded  will,  wills  what  he*  wills  for  all  eternity." 

As  to  foreign  relations,  the  state,  in  obedience  to 
its  ideal  mission,  must  conquer  the  surrounding  bar- 
barians and  raise  them  to  a  state  of  culture.  It  is 
this  process  almost  exclusively  that  has  introduced 
progress  into  history.  "  What  impels  the  Macedonian 
hero  ...  to  seek  foreign  lands  ?  What  chains  victory 
to  his  footsteps  and  scatters  before  him  in  terror  the 
countless  hordes  of  his  enemies  ?  Is  this  mere  fortune  ? 
No;  it  is  an  Idea.  .  .  .  The  civilised  must  rule  and 
the  uncivilised  must  ob^y,  if  Right  is  to  be  the  law 


^f  the  world.  .  .  .  Tell  me  not  of  the  thousands  who 
fell  round  his  path;  speak  not  of  his  own  early  death. 
After  the  realisation  of  his  Idea,  what  was  there 
greater  for  him  to  do  than  to  die  ?  " 

This  enthusiasm  for  Alexander  (which  Hegel 
shared)  is  not  merely  retrospective.  "  At  last  in  one 
nation  of  the  world  the  highest,  purest  morality,  such 
as  was  never  seen  before  among  men,  will  arise  and 
will  be  made  secure  for  all  future  time,  and  thence 
will  be  extended  over  all  other  peoples.  There  will 
ensue  a  transformation  of  the  human  race  from 
earthly  and  sensual  creatures  into  pure  and  noble 
spirits."  "Do  you  know  anything  higher  than 
death?  .  .  .  Who  has  a  right  to  stand  in  the  way 
of  an  enterprise  begun  in  the  face  of  this  peril  ?  " 

It  may  seem  curious  that  an  uncompromising 
puritan  like  Fichte,  a  prophet  sprung  from  the  people, 
a  theoretical  republican  who  quarrelled  with  his 
students  for  forming  clubs  and  fighting  duels,  a 
fierce  idealist  full  of  contempt  for  worldlings,  should 
have  so  perfectly  supplied  the  Junkers  and  bankers 
with  their  philosophy.  But  the  phenomenon  is  not 
new.  Plato,  divine  and  urbane  as  he  was,  supplied 
the  dull  Spartans  with  theirs.  Men  of  idealistic  faith 
are  confident  that  the  foundations  of  things  must 
be  divine,  and  when,  upon  investigating  these  foun- 
dations, they  come  upon  sinister  principles — blind 


1 


82     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


impulse,  chance,  murderous  competition — they  fanati- 
cally erect  these  very  principles  into  sacred  maxims. 
All  strength,  they  are  antecedently  convinced,  must 
come  from  God;  therefore  if  deception,  wilfulness, 
tyranny,  and  big  battalions  are  the  means  to  power, 
they  must  be  the  chosen  instruments  of  God  on 
earth.  In  some  such  way  the  Catholic  Church,  too, 
for  fear  of  impiety,  is  seen  blessing  many  a  form  of 
deceit  and  oppression.  Thus  the  most  ardent  specu- 
lation may  come  to  sanction  the  most  brutal  practice. 
The  primitive  passions  so  sanctioned,  because  they 
seem  to  be  safe  and  potent,  are  probably  too  narrowly 
organised  to  sustain  themselves  long;  and  meantime 
they  miss  and  trample  down  the  best  things  that 
mankind  possesses.  Nevertheless  they  are  a  force  like 
any  other,  a  force  not  only  vehement  but  contagious, 
and  capable  of  many  victories  though  of  no  stable 
success.  Such  passions,  and  the  philosophies  that 
glorify  them,  are  sincere,  absorbing,  and  if  frankly 
expressed  irrefutable. 

The  transcendental  theory  of  a  world  merely 
imagined  by  the  ego,  and  the  will  that  deems  itself 
absolute  are  certainly  desperate  delusions;  but  not 
more  desperate  or  deluded  than  many  another  system 
that  millions  have  been  brought  to  accept.  The  thing 
bears  all  the  marks  of  a  new  religion.  The  fact  that 
the  established  religions  of  Germany  are  still  forms 


THE  MISSION  OF  GERMANY 


83 


of  Christianity  may  obscure  the  explicit  and  heathen 
character  of  the  new  faith:  it  passes  for  a  somewhat 
faded  speculation,  or  for  the  creed  of  a  few  extremists, 
when  in  reality  it  dominates  the  judgment  and  con- 
duct of  the  nation.  No  religious  tyranny  could  be 
more  complete.  It  has  its  prophets  in  the  great 
philosophers  and  historians  of  the  last  century;  its 
high  priests  and  pharisees  in  the  government  and 
the  professors;  its  faithful  flock  in  the  disciplined 
mass  of  the  nation;  its  heretics  in  the  socialists;  its 
dupes  in  the  Catholics  and  the  liberals,  to  both  of 
whom  the  national  creed,  if  they  understood  it,  would 
be  an  abomination;  it  has  its  martyrs  now  by  the 
million,  and  its  victims  among  unbelievers  are  even 
more  numerous,  for  its  victims,  in  some  degree,  are 
all  men. 


THE  EGOTISM  OF  IDEAS 


8S 


•.i 


i 


1 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  EGOTISM  OF  IDEAS 


When  we  are  discussing  egotism  need  we  speak  of 
Hegel?    The  tone  of  this  philosopher,  especially  in 
his  later  writings,  was  full  of  contempt  for  everything 
subjective:   the  point  of  view  of  the  individual,  his 
opinions  and  wishes,  were  treated  as  of  no  account 
unless  they  had  been  brought  into  line  with  the 
providential  march  of  events  and  ideas  in  the  great 
world.    This  realism,  pronounced  and  even  acrid  as 
it  was,  was  still  idealistic  in  the  sense  that  the  sub- 
stance of  the  world  was  conceived  not  to  be  material 
but  conceptual — a  law  or  logic  which  animated  phe- 
nomena and  was  the  secret  of  their  movement.   The 
world  was  like  a  riddle  or  confused  oracle;   and  the 
solution  to  the  puzzle  lay  in  the  romantic  instability 
or  self-contradiction  inherent  in  every  finite  form  of 
being,  which  compelled  it  to  pass  into  something 
different.    The  direction  of  this  movement  we  might 
understand  sympathetically  in  virtue  of  a  sort  of 
vital  dialectic  or  dramatic  necessity  in   our  own 
reflection.     Hegel  was  a  solemn  sophist:   he  made 
discourse  the  key  to  reality. 

«4 


This  technical  realism  in  Hegel  was  reinforced  by 
his  historical  imagination,  which  continually  produces 
an  impression  of  detachment,  objectivity,  and  im- 
personal intelligence;  he  often  seems  to  be  lost  in 
the  events  of  his  story  and  to  be  plucking  the  very 
heart  out  of  the  world.  Again,  he  adored  the  state, 
by  which  in  his  view  the  individual  should  be  entirely 
subjugated,  not  for  the  benefit  of  other  individuals 
(that  would  be  a  sort  of  vicarious  selfishness  no  less 
barren  than  private  profit),  but  in  the  rapt  service  of 
common  impersonal  ends. 

The  family  was  a  first  natural  group  in  which  the 
individual  should  be  happy  to  lose  himself,  the  trade- 
guild  was  another,  and  the  state  was  the  highest  and 
most  comprehensive  of  all;  there  was  nothing  worthy 
or  real  in  a  man  except  his  functions  in  society. 

Nevertheless  this  denial  of  egotism  is  apparent 
only.  It  is  a  play  within  the  play.  On  the  smaller 
stage  the  individual — save  for  his  lapses  and  stammer- 
ings— ^is  nothing  but  the  instrument  and  vehicle  of 
divine  decrees;  in  fact  he  is  a  puppet,  and  the  only 
reality  of  him  is  the  space  he  fills  in  the  total  spectacle. 
But  that  little  stage  is  framed  in  by  another,  often 
overlooked,  but  ever  present;  and  on  this  larger  and 
nearer  stage  the  ego  struts  alone.  It  is  I  that  pull 
the  strings,  enjoy  the  drama,  supply  its  plot  and 
moral,  and  possess  the  freedom  and  actuality  which 


86     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


THE  EGOTISM  OF  IDEAS 


my  puppets  lack.  On  the  little  stage  the  soul  of  a 
man  is  only  one  of  God's  ideas,  and  his  whole  worth 
lies  in  helping  out  the  pantomime;  on  the  big  stage, 
God  is  simply  my  idea  of  God  and  the  purpose  of 
the  play  is  to  express  my  mmd.  The  spectacle  in 
which  every  individual  dances  automatically  to  the 
divine  tune  is  only  my  dream. 

The  philosophy  of  Hegel  is  accordingly  subjective 
and  all  its  realism  is  but  a  pose  and  a  tone  wilfully 
assumed.  That  this  is  the  truth  of  the  matter  might 
be  inferred,  apart  from  many  continual  hints  and 
implications,  from  the  fact  that  the  system  is  tran- 
scendental and  founded  on  Kant.  Objectivity  can, 
therefore,  be  only  a  show,  a  matter  of  make-believe] 
something  imputed  to  things  and  persons  by  the 
mind,  whose  poetic  energies  it  manifests.  Everything 
must  be  set  down  as  a  creation  of  mind,  simply 
because  it  is  an  object  of  thought  or  knowledge. 

This  underlying  subjectivism  also  explains  the 
singular  satisfaction  of  Hegel,  whose  glance  was 
comprehensive  enough,  with  so  strangely  limited  a 
world  as  he  describes  to  us.  He  described  what  he 
knew  best  or  had  heard  of  most,  and  felt  he  had 
described  the  universe.  This  illusion  was  mevitable, 
because  his  principle  was  that  the  universe  was 
created  by  description  and  resided  in  it.  The  mission 
of  Hegel,  as  he  himself  conceived  it,  was  not  to  dis- 


87 


cover  the  real  world  or  any  part  of  it :  in  theory  he 
retracted  all  belief  in  a  real  world  and  set  in  its  place 
his  conception  or  knowledge  of  it — ^therefore  quite 
adequate  to  its  object.  If  China  was  the  oldest 
country  he  had  heard  of,  the  world  began  with 
China,  and  if  Prussia  was  the  youngest  and  he  (as 
he  had  to  be)  its  latest  philosopher,  the  world  ended 
with  Prussia  and  with  himself.  This  seems  a  monstrous 
egotism,  but  it  is  not  arbitrary;  in  one  sense  it  was 
the  least  pretentious  of  attitudes,  since  it  was  limited 
to  the  description  of  a  current  view,  not  of  a  separate 
or  prior  object.  The  value  of  a  philosophy  could  lie 
only  in  the  fullness  and  fidelity  with  which  it  might 
focus  the  conceptions  of  the  age  in  which  it  arose. 
Hegel  hoped  to  do  this  for  his  own  times;  he  did  not 
covet  truth  to  anything  further. 

The  same  attitude  explains  the  servility  of  his 
moral  philosophy,  which  is  simply  an  apology  for 
the  established  order  of  things  and  for  the  prejudices 
of  his  time  and  country.  His  deepest  conviction  was 
that  no  system  of  ethics  could  be  more,  and  if  it 
tried  to  be  more  would  be  less,  because  it  would  be 
merely  personal.  When,  for  instance,  he  condemned 
harshly  the  Roman  f  atria  poUstas  it  was  because  it 
offended  the  individualism  of  the  Protestant  and 
modem  conscience;  and  if  in  the  next  breath  he 
condemned  even  more  harshly  the  sentimentalists 


11 


I 


who  made  tender  feeling  and  good  intentions  the 
test*  of  virtue,  it  was  because  these  individual  con- 
sdences  absolved  themselves  from  conformity  to  the 
estabKshed  church  and  state.   To  inquire  whether  in 
Itself  or  in  respect  to  human  economy  generally,  the 
moraUty  of  Buddha,  or  Socrates,  or  Rousseau  was 
the  best  would  have  seemed  to  him  absurd:    the 
question  could  only  be  what  approaches  or  contri- 
butions each  of  these  made  to  the  moraUty  approved 
by  the  Lutheran  community  and  by  the  Prussian 
mmistry  of  education  and  public  worship.  The  truth, 
then  as  now,   was   whatever  every  good  German 
bdieved.     This  pious  wish  of  HegePs  to  interpret 
me  orthodoxy  of  his  generation  was  successful,  and 
Ae  modest  hopes  of  his  philosophy  were  fulfilled. 
Never  perhaps  was  a  system  so  true  to  its  date  and 
so  false  to  its  subject. 

The  egotism  of  Hegel  appears  also  in  his  treatment 

of  mathematical  and  physical  questions.  The  infinite 

he  called  the  false  infinite,  so  as  to  avoid  the  dilemmas 

wluch  It  placed  him  in,  such  as  why  the  evolution  of 

the  Idea  began  six  thousand  years  ago,  or  less;  what 

more  could  happen  now  that  in  his  self-consciousness 

that  evolution  was  complete;    why  it  should  have 

gone  on^m  this  planet  only,  or  if  it  had  gone  on  else- 

where  also,  why  the  Idea  evolving  there  might  not 

have  been  a  diflFerent  Idea.    But  all  such  questions 


THE  EGOTISM  OF  IDEAS 


89 

are  excluded  when  one  understands  that  this  philo- 
sophy is  only  a  point  of  view :  the  world  it  describes 
is  a  vista  not  Reparable  from  the  egotistical  per- 
spectives that  frame  it  in.  The  extent  of  the  world 
need  not  be  discussed,  because  that  extent  is  an 
appearance  only;  in  reality  the  world  has  no  extent, 
because  it  is  only  my  present  idea. 

The  infinite  thus  lost  its  application;  but  the  word 
was  too  idealistic  to  be  discarded.  Accordingly  the 
title  of  true  infinite  was  bestowed  on  the  eventual 
illusion  of  completeness,  on  an  alleged  system  of 
relations  out  of  relation  to  anything  beyond.  That 
nothing  existent,  unless  it  was  the  bad  infinite,  could 
be  absolute  in  this  manner  did  not  ruffle  Hegel,  for 
the  existent  did  not  really  concern  him  but  only 
"  knowledge,"  that  is,  a  circle  of  present  and  object- 
less ideas.  Knowledge,  however  limited  in  fact,  always 
has  the  completeness  in  question  for  the  egotist,  whose 
objects  are  not  credited  with  existing  beyond  him- 
self. Egotism  could  hardly  receive  a  more  radical 
expression  than  this:  to  declare  the  ego  infinite 
because  it  can  never  find  anything  that  is  beyond  its 
range. 

The  favourite  tenet  of  Hegel  that  everything 
involves  its  opposite  is  also  a  piece  of  egotism;  for 
it  is  equivalent  to  making  things  conform  to  words, 
not  words  to  things;    and  the  ego,  particularly  in 


m 


philosophers,  is  a  nebula  of  words.  In  defining  things, 
if  you  insist  on  defining  them,  you  are  constrained  to 
define  them  by  their  relation  to  other  things,  or  even 
exclusion  of  them.  If,  therefore,  things  are  formed  by 
your  definitions  of  them,  these  relations  and  exclu- 
sions wiU  be  the  essence  of  things.    The  notion  of 
such  intrinsic  relativity  in  things  is  a  sophism  even  in 
logic,  since  elementary  terms  can  never  be  defined 
yet  may  be  perfectly  well  understood  and  arrested 
in  intuition;  but  what  here  concerns  us  is  rather  the 
egotistical  motive  behind  that  sophism :  namely,  that 
the  most  verbal  and  subjective  accidents  to  which 
the  names  of  things  are  subject  in  human  discourse 
should  be  deputed  to  be  the  groundwork  of  the  things 
and  their  inmost  being. 

Egotistical,  too,  was  HegePs  tireless  hatred  of 
what  he  called  the  abstract  understanding.  In  his 
criticisms  of  this  faculty  and  the  opinions  it  forms 
there  is  much  keenness  and  some  justice.  People 
often  reason  in  the  abstract,  floating  on  words  as  on 
bladders:  in  their  knowingness  they  miss  the  com- 
plexity and  volume  of  real  things.  But  the  errors  or 
abuses  into  which  verbal  intelligence  may  fall  would 
never  produce  that  implacable  zeal  with  which  Hegel 
persecutes  it.  What  obsesses  him  is  the  fear  that,  in 
spite  of  its  frivolity,  the  understanding  may  some 
day  understand:  that  it  may  correct  its  inadequacies, 


THE  EGOTISM  OF  IDEAS 


91 


trace  the  real  movement  of  things,  and  seeing  their 
mechanism  lose  that  effet  d^ensemble^  that  dramatic 
illusion,  which  he  calls  reason. 

Imagine  a  landscape-painter  condemned  to  have 
a  naturalist  always  at  his  elbow:  soon  it  would  not 
be  merely  the  errors  of  the  naturalist  that  would 
irritate  him,  but  the  naturalist  himself.    The  artist 
intent  on  panoramic  effects  does  not  wish  to  be 
forced  to  look  through  a  microscope;    in  changing 
his  focus  he  loses  his  subjective  object:   not  reality 
but  appearance  is  the  reality  for  him.    Hegel,  since 
it  was  his  mission  to  substitute  so-called  knowledge 
for  being,  had  to  go  further;    he  had  to  convince 
himself,  not  only  that  the  structure  of  nature  dis- 
covered by  the  understanding  was  irrelevant  to  his 
own  conceptual  mythology,  but  that  such  a  structure 
did  not  exist.    He  was  not  willing  to  confess  (as  the 
landscape-painter  might)   that  he  was  an  egotist; 
that  it  was  the  subjective  that  interested  him,  and 
that  in  so  great  a  world  the  subjective  too  has  its 
place.    No!   he  must  pretend  that  his  egotism  was 
not  egotism,  but  identity  with  the  absolute,  and  that 
those  who  dared  to  maintain  that  the  world  wagged 
in  its  own  way,  apart  from  the  viewing  mind,  were 
devils,  because  they  suggested  that  the  viewing  mind 
was  not  God. 

It  is  this  latent  but  colossal  egotism  that  makes 


i1 


plausible  the  strange  use  which  Hegel  sometimes 
makes  of  the  word  substance.    His  substance  is  but 
his  grammar  of  discourse;    for  he  was  not  looking 
for  substance,  in  which  he  could  not  consistently 
bdieve,  but  only  for  the  ultimate  synthetic  impres- 
sion which  he  might  gather  from  appearances.    For 
the  theatre-goer,  the  function  of  scenery  and  actors 
is  that  they  should  please  and  impress  him:    but 
what,  in  the  end,  impresses  and  pleases  him?    The 
cumulative  burden  and  force  of  the  play;    the  en- 
hanced  Kfe  which  it  has  stimulated  in  himself.   This, 
for  that  ruthless  egotist,  the  aesthete,  is  the  substance 
of  all  things  theatrical.    Of  course,  in  fact,  nothing 
could  be  falser,  for  the  author  and  actors  are  real 
people,  with  lives  far  outrunning  their  function  in 
the  theatre  and  truly  grounding  it.    Even  the  stage 
machinery  has  its  natural  history,  and  the  artisans 
who  made  it  have  theirs,  both  full  of  mute  inglorious 
tragedies.     These  real  substances  behind  his  enter- 
tainment  the   spectator,   in   his   aesthetic   egotism, 
laughs  at  as  irrelevant;   for  him,  as  for  Hamlet,  the 
pla/s  the  thing.  What  is  most  his  own,  his  imagina- 
tove  reaction  on  the  spectacle,  the  terms  in  which  he 
finds  It  easiest  and  most  exciting  to  describe  it,  he 
calls  the  substance  of  it;  a  term  which  betrays  the 
profound  impudence  of  the  deUberate  egotist;    the 
deepest  reahty  he  will  recognise  is  merely  specious. 


THE  EGOTISM  OF  IDEAS 


93 


existing  only  for  the  mind  that  imagines  it.  What 
is  supposed  to  rescue  the  system  of  Hegel  from  sub- 
jectivism is  the  most  subjective  of  things — a  dialectic 
which  obeys  the  impulses  of  a  theoretical  parti  pris, 
and  glorifies  a  fixed  idea. 

When  we  have  understood  all  this,  those  traits  of 
HegePs  which  at  first  sight  seem  least  egotistical— 
his  historical  insight  and  his  enthusiasm  for  organised 
society — ^take  on  a  new  colour.  That  historical  in- 
sight is  not  really  sympathetic;  it  is  imperious, 
external,  contemptuous,  feigned.  If  you  are  a  modern 
reading  the  Greeks,  especially  if  you  read  them  in 
the  romantic  spirit  of  Goethe's  classicism,  and  know 
of  them  just  what  Hegel  knew,  you  will  think  his 
description  wonderfully  penetrating,  masterly,  and 
complete :  but  would  iEschylus  or  Plato  have  thought 
it  so  ?  They  would  have  laughed,  or  rather  they 
would  not  have  understood  that  such  a  description 
referred  to  them  at  all.  It  is  the  legend  of  the  Greeks, 
not  the  life  of  the  Greeks,  that  is  analysed  by  him. 
So  his  account  of  mediaeval  religion  represents  the 
Protestant  legend,  not  the  Catholic  experience.  What 
we  know  little  or  nothing  about  seems  to  us  in  Hegel 
admirably  characterised:  what  we  know  intimately 
seems  to  us  painted  with  the  eye  of  a  pedantic, 
remote,  and  insolent  foreigner.  It  is  but  an  idea  of 
his  own  that  he  is  foisting  upon  us,  calling  it  our  soul. 


I 


94.     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


He  is  creating  a  world  in  his  head  which  might  be 
admirable,  if  God  had  made  it. 

Every  one  is  subject  to  such  illusions  of  perspective 
and  to  the  pathos  of  distance,  now  favourable,  now  un- 
favourable to  what  he  studies;   but  Hegel,  thinking 
he  had  the  key  to  the  divine  design,  fancied  himself 
deeply  sympathetic  because  he  saw  in  everything  some 
fragment  of  himself.    But  no  part  of  the  world  was 
that;  every  part  had  its  own  inalienable  superiority, 
which  to  transcend  was  to  lose  for  ever.     To  the 
omniscient  egotist  every  heart  is  closed.     The  past 
will  never  give  away  its  secret  except  to  some  self- 
forgetful  and  humble  lover  who  by  nature  has  a 
kindred  destiny.   The  egotist  who  thinks  to  grasp  it, 
so  as  to  serve  it  up  at  his  philosophic  banquet,  or 
exhibit  it  in  his  museum  of  antiquities,  grasps  only 
himself;    and  in  that  sense,  to  his  confusion,  his 
egotism  turns  out  true. 

The  egotism  that  appears  in  this  lordly  way  of 
treating  the  past  is  egotism  of  the  imagination,  the 
same  that  was  expressed  in  the  romantic  love  of 
nature,  which  was  really  a  very  subtle,  very  studious, 
very  obstinate  love  of  self,  intent  on  finding  some 
reference  and  deference  to  oneself  in  everything.  But 
there  is  also  an  egotism  of  passion,  which  in  Hegel 
appears  in  his  worship  of  the  state.  "  The  passions  " 
is  the  old  and  fit  name  for  what  the  Germans  call 


THE  EGOTISM  OF  IDEAS 


95 


ideals.  The  passions  are  not  selfish  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  German  moralists  denounce  selfishness; 
they  are  not  contrived  by  him  who  harbours  them 
for  his  ulterior  profit.  They  are  ideal,  dangerous, 
often  fatal.  Even  carnal  passions  are  not  selfish,  if 
by  the  self  we  understand  the  whole  man :  they  are 
an  obsession  to  which  he  sacrifices  himself.  But  the 
transcendental  philosophy  with  its  migratory  ego  can 
turn  any  single  passion,  or  any  complex  of  passions, 
into  a  reputed  centre  of  will,  into  a  moral  personage. 
As  the  passion  usurps  more  and  more  of  the  man's 
nature  it  becomes  a  fierce  egotist  in  his  place;  it 
becomes  fanaticism  or  even  madness. 

This  substitution  of  a  passion  for  a  man,  when 
nobody  thought  the  ego  migratory,  seemed  a  disease. 
What  folly,  we  said  to  the  human  soul,  to  sacrifice 
your  natural  life  to  this  partial,  transitory,  visionary 
passion!  But  the  German  idealist  recognises  no 
natural  life,  no  natural  individual.  His  ego  can 
migrate  into  any  political  body  or  any  synthetic 
idea.  Therefore,  his  passions,  far  from  seeming  follies 
to  him,  seem  divine  inspirations,  calls  to  sacrifice, 
fidelities  to  the  ideal. 

I  am  far  from  wishing  to  say  that  a  German  idealist 
is  commonly  just  to  all  the  passions  and  raises  them 
in  turn  to  be  his  highest  and  absolute  will.  His 
passions  are  generally  few  and  mental.   Accidents  of 


'} 


Ill 


r 

111! 


i 


96     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


training  or  limitations  of  temperament  keep  him 
respectable;  but  he  is  never  safe.  Dazzle  him  with 
a  sophism,  such,  for  instance,  as  that  "  the  more  evil 
the  more  good,"  or  hypnotise  him  with  a  super- 
stition,  such  as  that  "organisation  is  an  end  in 
itself,"  and  nothmg  more  is  needed  to  turn  him  into 
a  romantic  criminal. 

Even  the  absolute  requires  an  enemy  to  whet  its 
edge  upon,  and  the  state,  which  according  to  Hegel 
is  morally  absolute,  requires  rival  states  in  order 
that  its  separate  mdividuality  may  not  seem   to 
vanish,  and  with  it  the  occasion  for  blessed  and 
wholesome  wars.      Hegel   rejects   the   notion   that 
nations  have  any  duties  to  one  another  because, 
as  he  asserts,  there  is  no  moral  authority  or  tribunal 
higher  than  the  state,  to  which  its  government  could 
be  subject.   This  assertion  is  evidently  false,  since  in 
the  first  place  there  is  6od  or,  if  the  phrase  be  pre- 
ferred, there  is  the  highest  good  of  mankind,  hedging 
in  very  narrowly  the  path  that  states  should  foUow 
between  opposite  vices;  and  in  the  second  place  there 
is  the  individual,  whose  natural  aUegiance  to  his 
family,  friends,  and  religion,  to  truth  and  to  art,  is 
deeper  and  hoUer  than  his  aUegiance  to  the  state, 
which  for  the  soul  of  man  is  an  historical  and  geo^ 
'  graphical  accident.  No  doubt  at  the  present  stage  of 
civilisation  there  is  more  to  be  gained  than  lost  by 


THE  EGOTISM  OF  IDEAS 


97 


liij 


co-operating  loyally  with  the  governments  under 
which  we  happen  to  live,  not  because  any  state  is 
divine,  but  because  as  yet  no  less  cumbrous  machinery 
is  available  for  carrying  on  the  economy  of  life  with 
some  approach  to  decency  and  security.  For  Hegel, 
however,  the  life  of  the  state  was  the  moral  substance, 
and  the  souls  of  men  but  the  accidents;  and  as  to 
the  judgment  of  God  he  asserted  that  it  was  none 
other  than  the  course  of  history.  This  is  a  charac- 
teristic saying,  in  which  he  seems  to  proclaim  the 
moral  government  of  the  world,  when  in  truth  he  is 
sanctifying  a  brutal  law  of  success  and  succession. 
The  best  government,  of  course,  succumbs  in  time 
like  the  worst,  and  sooner;  the  dark  ages  followed 
upon  the  Roman  Empire  and  lasted  twice  as  long. 
But  Hegel's  God  was  simply  the  world,  or  a  formula 
supposed  to  describe  the  world.  He  despised  every 
ideal  not  destined  to  be  realised  on  earth,  he  respected 
legality  more  than  justice,  and  extant  institutions 
more  than  moral  ideals;  and  he  wished  to  flatter  a 
government  in  whose  policy  war  and  even  crime  were 
recognised  weapons. 

This  reign  of  official  passion  is  not,  let  me  repeat, 
egotism  in  the  natural  man  who  is  subject  to 
it;  it  is  the  sacrifice  of  the  natural  man  and  of 
all  men  to  an  abstract  obsession,  called  an  ideal. 
The  vice  of  absoluteness  and  egotism  is  transferred 


« 


^i 


98     EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

to  that  visionary  agent.  The  man  may  be  docile  and 
gentle  enough,  but  the  demon  he  listens  to  is  ruth- 
less and  deaf.  It  forbids  him  to  ask,  "  At  what  price 
do  I  pursue  this  ideal  ?  How  much  harm  must  I  do 
to  attain  this  good  f  "  No ;  this  imperative  is  cate* 
gorical.  The  die  is  cast,  the  war  against  human 
nature  and  happiness  is  declared,  and  an  idol  that 
feeds  on  blood,  the  Absolute  State,  is  set  up  in  the 
heart  and  over  the  city. 


CHAPTER  IX 

EGOTISM  AND   SELFISHNESS 

In  a  review  of  egotism  in  German  philosophy  it 
would  hardly  be  excusable  to  ignore  the  one  notable 
writer  who  has  openly  adopted  egotism  in  name  as 
well  as  in  fact.  The  work  of  Max  Stimer  on  the 
single  separate  person  and  what  he  may  call  his  own 
hardly  belongs  to  German  philosophy  as  I  have  been 
using  the  words:  it  lacks  the  transcendental  point 
of  departure,  as  well  as  all  breadth  of  view,  meta- 
physical subtlety,  or  generous  afflatus;  it  is  a  bold, 
frank,  and  rather  tiresome  protest  against  the  folly 
of  moral  idealism,  against  the  sacrifice  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  any  ghostly  powers  such  as  God,  duty,  the 
state,  humanity,  or  society;  all  of  which  this  re- 
doubtable critic  called  "  spooks  "  and  regarded  as 
fixed  ideas  and  pathological  obsessions.  This  crudity 
was  relieved  by  a  strong  mother-wit  and  a  dogged 
honesty;  and  it  is  not  impossible  that  this  poor 
schoolmaster,  in  his  solitary  meditations,  may  have 
embodied  prophetically  a  rebellion  against  polite  and 
religious  follies  which  is  brewing  in  the  working 
classes — classes  which  to-morrow  perhaps  will  absorb 
all  mankind  and  give  for  the  first  time  a  plebeian 
tone  to  philosophy. 

99 


loo   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


ll 


1 

I 


Max  Stirner  called  the  migratory  ego  back  to  its 
nest.  He  exorcised  that  "  spook  "  which  had  been 
ascending  and  descending  the  ladder  of  abstractions, 
lodged  now  in  a  single  passion,  now  in  a  political 
body,  now  in  a  logical  term,  now  in  the  outspread 
universe.  The  only  true  ego,  he  insisted,  was  the 
bodily  person,  the  natural  individual  who  is  bom 
and  dies.  No  other  organ  or  seat  existed  for  the 
mind,  or  for  any  of  its  functions.  Personal  interests 
were  the  only  honest  interests  a  man  could  have,  and 
if  he  was  brow-beaten  or  indoctrinated  into  sacrificing 
them,  that  moral  coercion  was  a  scandal  and  a  wrong. 
The  indomitable  individual  should  shake  off  those 
chains,  which  were  only  cobwebs,  and  come  into  his 


own. 


Egotism  thus  becomes  individualism,  and  threatens 
to  become  selfishness.  The  logic  of  these  positions 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  clear  to  Max  Stirner, 
That  the  individual  must  possess  all  his  wishes  and 
aspirations,  even  the  most  self-denying  and  suicidal, 
is  obvious;  he  is  the  seat  of  those  very  obsessions 
and  superstitions  which  Max  Stirner  deplored.  The 
same  thing  is  true  of  knowledge:  a  man  can  know 
only  what  he  knows  and  what  his  faculties  make  him 
capable  of  knowing.  This  fact  is  the  excuse  for  tran- 
scendentalism, and  the  element  of  truth  in  it.  But 
the  fact  that  volition  and  knowledge  must  have  their 


!^-i| 


EGOTISM  AND  SELFISHNESS 


lOI 


seat  in  some  person  prejudges  nothing  about  the 
scope  of  their  objects.   The  fallacy  of  egotism  begins 
with  the  inference  that,  therefore,  a  person  can  know 
only  his  ideas  and  can  live  only  for  his  own  benefit. 
On  the  contrary,  what  makes  knowledge  knowledge 
is  that  our  sensibility  may  report  something  which 
is  not  merely  our  feeling;  and  our  moral  being  arises 
when  our  interests  likewise  begin  to  range  over  the 
world.    To  deny  that  a  man  is  capable  of  generosity 
because  his  generosity  must  be  his  own,  is  insufferable 
quibbling.     Even  our  vanities  and  follies  are  dis- 
interested  in   their  way;    their  egotism  is  not  a 
calculated  selfishness.    When  a  man  orders  his  tomb 
according  to  his  taste,  it  is  not  in  the  hope  of  enjoying 
his  residence  in  it. 

Max  Stirner,  while  deprecating  all  subordination 
of  the  individual  to  society,  expected  people,  even 
after  they  were  emancipated,  to  form  voluntary 
unions  for  specific  purposes,  such  as  playing  games. 
Did  he  think  that  such  companionship  and  co-opera- 
tion would  go  without  gregarious  feelings  and  ideal 
interests  ?  Would  not  a  player  wish  his  side  to  win  ? 
Would  he  not  impose  a  rather  painful  strain  upon 
himself  at  times  for  the  sake  of  that  "spook," 
victory?  All  the  sacrifices  that  society  or  religion 
imposes  on  a  man,  when  they  are  legitimate,  are 
based  on  the  same  principle. 


f 


EGOTISM  AND  SELFISHNESS 


103 


The  protest  of  Max  Stimer  against  sham  ideals 
and  aims  forced  upon  us  by  social  pressure  should 
not  then  have  extended  to  ideals  congenial  to  the 
natural  man  and  founded  on  his  instincts.  Since  the 
seat  of  our  enthusiasms  must  be  personal,  their  appeal 
should  be  so  too,  if  they  are  to  inspire  us  efficaciously; 
but  every  art  and  science  shows  that  they  may  be 
utterly  impersonal  in  their  object.  It  was  not  in 
proposing  ideal  aims  that  the  German  philosophers 
were  wrong:  that  was  the  noble  and  heroic  side  of 
their  doctrine,  as  well  as  a  point  in  which  their  psy- 
chology was  correct.  Their  error  lay  in  defining  these 
aims  arbitrarily  and  imposing  them  absolutely,  trying 
to  thrust  into  us  ideals  like  endless  strife  and  absolute 
will,  which  perhaps  our  souls  abhor.  But  if  our  souls 
abhor  those  things,  it  is  because  they  love  something 
else;  and  this  other  thing  they  love  for  its  own  sake, 
so  that  the  very  refusal  to  sacrifice  to  those  idols  is 
a  proof  of  faith  in  a  true  God. 

The  conclusion  of  Max  Stimer,  that  because  those 
idols  are  false,  and  the  worship  of  them  is  cruel  and 
superstitious,  therefore  we  must  worship  nothing 
and  merely  enjoy  in  a  piggish  way  what  we  may  call 
our  own,  is  a  conclusion  that  misreads  human  nature. 
It  overlooks  the  fact  that  man  lives  by  the  imagina- 
tion, that  the  imagination — ^when  not  chaotic  and 
futile— is  exercised  in  the  arts  of  life,  that  the  objects 


of  these  arts  are  impersonal,  and  that  to  achieve 
these  objects  brings  us  a  natural  happiness. 

The  Germans  are  by  nature  a  good  stolid  people, 
and  it  is  curious  that  their  moralists,  of  every  school, 
are  so  fantastic  and  bad.   The  trouble  lies  perhaps  in 
this,  that  they  are  all  precipitate.     They  have  not 
taken  the  trouble  to  decipher  human  nature,  which 
is  an  endowment^  something  many-sided,  unconscious, 
with  a  margin  of  variation,  and  have  started  instead 
with  the  will,  which  is  only  an  attitude^  something 
casual,  conscious,  and  narrowly  absolute.    Nor  have 
they  learned  to  respect  sufficiently  the  external  con- 
ditions under  which  human  nature  operates  and  to 
which  it  must  conform — God,  the  material  world, 
the  nature  and  will  of  other  men.     Their  morality 
consequently  terminates  in  ideals,  casual,  conscious, 
and  absolute   expressions   of  the   passions,   or   else 
expires  in  a  mysticism  which  renounces  all  moral 
judgment.    A  reasonable  morality  terminates  instead 
in  the  arts,  by  which  human  ideals  and  passions  are 
compounded  with  experience   and  adapted  to  the 
materials  they  must  work  in.   The  immaturity  of  the 
German  moralists  appears  in  their  conception  that 
the  good  is  life,  which  is  what  an  irrational  animal 
might  say :   whereas  for  a  rational  being  the  good  is 
only  the  good  part  of  life,  that  healthy,  stable,  wise, 
kind,  and  beautiful  sort  of  life  which  he  calls  happiness. 


1'^ 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   BREACH   WITH   CHRISTIANITY 

German  philosophy  has  a  religious  spirit,  but  its 
alliance  with  C3iristianity  has  always  been  equivocal 
and  external.    Even  in  the  speculations  of  Leibniz, 
concerned  as  he  was  about  orthodoxy,  there  was  a 
spirit  of  independence  and  absolutism  which  was 
rationalistic,  not  to  say  heathen.    The  principle  of 
sufficient  reason,  for  instance,  demands  that  God  and 
nature  shall  explain  their  existence  and  behaviour  to 
us,  as  timid  parents  explain  their  behaviour  to  their 
censorious  children.    By  rendering  everything  neces- 
sary, even  the  acts  of  God,  it  takes  the  place  of  God 
and  makes  him  superfluous.   Such  frigid  optimism  as 
this  principle  involves,  besides  being  fatalistic,  is 
deeply  discouraging  to  that  hope  of  deUverance  which 
is  the  soul  of  Christianity:    for  if  this  is  the  best 
world  possible,  how  poor  must  be  that  realm  of 
possible  worlds  where  everything  is   tainted,  and 
there  is  no  heaven!    The  theory,  too,  that  each  soul 
contains  the  seeds  of  its  whole  experience  and  suffices 
for  its  own  infinite  development,  destroys  the  mean- 
ing of  creation,  revelation,  miracles,  sin,  grace,  and 

104 


THE  BREACH  WITH  CHRISTIANITY    105 

charity.  Thus  without  intending  it,  even  the  ob- 
sequious but  incredibly  intelligent  Leibniz  under- 
mined all  the  doctrines  of  Christianity  in  the  act  of 
thinking  them  afresh,  and  insinuated  into  them  a 
sort  of  magic  heathen  individualism. 

Kant,  Fichte,  and  Hegel  were  less  punctilious  in 
their  theology,  but  they  still  intended  to  be  or  to 
seem  Christians.  They  felt  that  what  made  the 
sanctity  of  traditional  religion  and  its  moral  force 
could  be  recovered  in  a  purer  form  in  their  systems. 
This  feeling  of  theirs  was  not  unwarranted;  at  least, 
many  religious  minds,  after  the  first  shock  of  losing 
their  realistic  faith,  have  seen  in  transcendentalism 
a  means,  and  perhaps  the  only  safe  means,  of  still 
maintaining  a  sort  of  Christianity  which  shall  not 
claim  any  longer  to  be  a  miraculous  or  exceptional 
revelation,  but  only  a  fair  enough  poetic  symbol  for 
the  principles  found  in  all  moral  life.  That  he  who 
loses  his  life  shall  save  it,  for  instance,  is  a  maxim 
much  prized  and  much  glossed  by  Hegelians.  They 
lend  it  a  meaning  of  their  own,  which  might,  indeed, 
be  said  to  be  the  opposite  of  what  the  Gospel  meant; 
for  there  the  believer  is  urged  to  discard  the  very 
world  with  which  Hegel  asks  him  to  identify  himself. 
The  idea  is  that  if  you  surrender  your  private  interests 
to  those  of  your  profession,  science,  or  country,  you 
become  thereby  a  good  and  important  person,  and 


■■■■•■liiHi 


io6   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

unintentionally  a  happy  one.  You  will  then  feel  that 
the  world  shares  your  thoughts  and  renders  them 
perpetual,  while  you,  bemg  absorbed  in  ideal  pur- 
suits, forget  your  private  miseries  and  mortality. 

In  this  sort  of  moral  psychology  there  is  evidently 
some  truth;  but  the  "  law  of  experience  "  which  it 
points  to  is  but  a  loose  and  ambiguous  law,  which 
disguises  more  facts  than  it  expresses.  Honest  minds 
will  rebel  against  the  suggestion  that  when  you  out- 
grow a  desire  you  have  fulfilled  it;  and  they  will 
detect  the  furtive  irony  in  bidding  you  live  hard  in 
order  not  to  feel  the  vanity  of  living.  To  drown 
sorrow  in  work,  and  to  forget  private  failures  in 
public  interests,  is  certainly  possible,  but  it  is  only 
druggiiig  yourself  with  hurry  and  routine,  which  may 
not  be  more  advantageous  to  others  than  it  really  is 
to  yourself.  Impersonal  or  "  ideal  '*  aims  are  not 
necessarily  less  delusive  or  "  higher  "  than  personal 
ones;  in  fact  there  is  far  more  likelihood  that  they 
are  conventional  humbug.  This  pathological  hygiene 
of  idealism,  which  always  stops  at  some  uncriticised 
impulse,  thinks  it  secures  health  when  perhaps  it  has 
only  increased  the  dose  of  illusion. 

Nevertheless  transcendentalism  has  this  important 
element  in  common  with  C3iristianity  and  with  the 
other  Hebraic  religions,  that  it  regards  human 
interests  as  the  core  of  the  universe  and  God  as  the 


THE  BREACH  WITH  CHRISTIANITY    107 


God  of  man,  who  disposes  all  things  for  man's  benefit. 
In  its  eyes  the  sphere  of  providence  and  moral  life  is 
bounded  by  the  history  of  a  part  of  Europe  and  Asia 
for  a  few  thousand  years.  So  long  as  transcen- 
dentalism is  taken  to  imply  some  such  philosophy  of 
history  it  can  compound  its  differences  with  liberal 
Christianity,  since  they  are  at  one  in  the  cardinal 
point  of  their  faith,  which  is  the  apotheosis  of  the 

human  spirit. 

Yet  this  human  egotism,  which  comforts  so  many 
minds,  offends  others,  in  their  way  no  less  religious. 
Of  course,  those  who  believe  in  the  infinity  of  the 
universe,  be  they  mystics  or  naturalists,  smile  at 
such  pettiness  and  fatuity.    But  even  among  tran- 
scendentalists,  some  are  repelled;    for  the  dominion 
which  they  attribute  to  their  ego  is  a  dominion  over 
appearances  only;    they  do  not  pretend  that  the 
grammar  of  the  human  intellect  can  lay  down  the 
law  for  the  world  at  large.  At  the  same  time,  in  their 
own  house  they  wish  to  keep  their  freedom.    That 
prescribed  evolution  and  that  reversible  optimism 
of  the  absolute  transcendentalists  are  repulsive  to 
them;  they  resent  that  such  a  precise  and  distasteful 
career  should  be  imposed  on  their  transcendental 
individuality,  and  should  swallow  it  up.    It  is  these 
rebels  that  have  carried  romanticism  and  German 
philosophy  into  its  last  phase.   They  have  broken  at 


I08   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

last  with  Christianity  and  at  the  same  time  with  the 
theological  and  cosmic  transcendentalism  that  was 
Its  treacherous  ally,  and  hoped  to  be  its  heir. 

The  transcendentalism  of  Schopenhauer,  sweeping 
as  It  was  in  Its  way,  retained  the  modest  and  agnostic 
<Aaracter  it  had  had  in  Kant:   he  proclaimed  that 
the  world  was  his  idea,  but  meant  only  (what  is  un- 
d«uable)  that  his  idea  of  the  world  was  his  idea. 
The  egotistical  doctrine  that  the  whole  universe  is 
but  the  image  of  it  created  by  the  mind  disappeared 
altogether  m  Ws  system.    The  so-caUed  Will  wMch 
he  still  placed  behind  everything  was  no  longer  his 
own  wm  evolvmg  experience  out  of  nothing;  it  was 
a  fanciful  name  for  whatever  force  or  substance  might 
he    behind    experience,   animating   all   its    objects, 
determining  their  inherent  life,  and  constituting  them 
facts  collateral  with  himself.      If  his  metaphysics 
remained  idealistic,  it  was  on  account  of  his  romantic 
habit  of  assimilating  the  life  of  nature  to  that  of 
man,  as  hasty  introspection  reveals  it;   so  that  the 
universe  is  described  in  moral  and  poetical  terms 
rather  than  m  the  terms  of  science. 

The  consequences  of  this  change  were  important 
The  Will  became  infinite  in  what  Hegel  called  the 
evil  saise,  that  is,  in  the  true  one.  It  was  no  longer 
possible  to  speak  of  a  phm  of  creation,  nor  of  a 
dramatic  progress  in  history,  with  its  beginning  in 


THE  BREACH  WITH  CHRISTIANITY   109 

Eden  and  its  end  in  Berlin.  Life  was  seen  to  radiate, 
as  it  really  does,  from  an  elementary  form  into  all 
sorts  of  disparate  and  incomparable  growths,  capable 
of  endless  diversity.  No  limit,  no  forced  co-operation, 
no  stereotyped  method  was  imputed  to  life.  The 
pocket  universe  of  Hegel  opened  out  to  the  stars,  so 
hateful  to  that  philosopher.  Man  lost  his  importance 
and  at  the  same  time  the  insufferable  burden  of  his 
false  pretensions.  In  Schopenhauer  frankness  returned, 
and  with  frankness  clearness.  Yet  he  could  not  quite 
reconcile  man  to  his  actual  place  in  nature.  A  deep 
prejudice  still  intervened. 

Both  Christianity  and  romanticism  had  accustomed 
people  to  disregard  the  intrinsic  value  of  things.  Things 
ought  to  be  useful  for  salvation,  or  symbols  of  other 
greater  but  unknown  things :  it  was  not  to  be  expected 
that  they  should  be  simply  good  in  themselves.  This 
life  was  to  be  justified,  if  justified  at  all,  only  as  servile 
work  or  tedious  business  may  be  justified,  not  as 
health  or  artistic  expression  justify  themselves.  Unless 
some  external  and  ulterior  end  could  be  achieved 
by  living,  it  was  thought  that  life  would  be  vanity. 
Remove  now  the  expectation  of  a  millennium  or  of  a 
paradise  in  the  sky,  and  it  may  seem  that  all  serious 
value  has  disappeared  from  our  earthly  existence. 
Yet  this  feeling  is  only  a  temporary  after-image  of  a 
particular  education. 


W ' 


r 


ii< 


I 


no   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

The  romantic  poets,  through  pride,  restlessness, 
and  longing  for  vague  impossible  things,  came  to  the 
same  conclusion  that  the  church  had  reached  through 
censoriousness  and  hope.  To  be  always  dissatisfied 
seemed  to  that  Faust-like  age  a  mark  of  loftiness. 
To  be  dissatisfied  is,  indeed,  a  healthy  and  promising 
thing,  when  what  troubles  us  can  be  set  right;  but 
the  romantic  mmd  despises  such  incidental  improve- 
ments which  far  from  freeing  the  wild  egotistical 
soul  would  rather  fatten  and  harness  it.  It  is  beneath 
the  romantic  pessimist  to  remember  that  people,  in 
all  ages,  sometimes  achieve  what  they  have  set  their 
hearts  on,  and  that  if  human  will  and  conduct  were 
better  disciplined,  this  contentment  would  be  more 
frequent  and  more  massive.  On  the  contrary,  he 
asserts  that  willing  is  always  and  everywhere  abortive. 

How  can  he  persuade  himself  of  something  so 
evidently  false  ?  By  that  mystical  misinterpretation  of 
human  nature  which  is  perhaps  the  core  of  roman- 
ticism. He  imagines  that  what  is  desired  is  not 
this  or  that — ^food,  children,  victory,  knowledge,  or 
some  other  specific  goal  of  a  human  instinct — ^but  an 
abstract  and  perpetual  happiness  behind  all  these 
alternating  interests.  Of  course  an  abstract  and 
perpetual  happiness  is  impossible,  not  merely  because 
events  are  sure  to  disturb  any  equilibrium  we  may 
think  we  have  established  in  our  lives,  but  for  the 


THE  BREACH  WITH  CHRISTIANITY   in 


far  more  fundamental  reason  that  we  have  no  abstract 
and  perpetual  instinct  to  satisfy.  The  desire  for  self- 
preservation  or  power  or  union  with  God  is  no  more 
perpetual  or  comprehensive  than  any  other:  it  is 
commonly  when  we  are  in  straits  that  we  become 
aware  of  such  objects,  and  to  achieve  them,  or  imagine 
we  achieve  them,  will  give  us  only  a  momentary  satis- 
faction, like  any  other  success.  A  highest  good  to  be 
obtained  apart  from  each  and  every  specific  interest 
is  more  than  unattainable;  it  is  unthinkable.  The 
romanticist,  chasing  wilfully  that  ignis  fatuus, 
naturally  finds  his  life  arduous  and  disappointing. 
But  he  might  have  learned  from  Plato  or  any  sound 
moralist,  if  his  genius  could  allow  him  to  learn  any- 
thing, that  the  highest  good  of  man  is  the  sum  and 
harmony  of  those  specific  goods  upon  which  lus 
nature  is  directed.  But  because  the  romantic  will 
was  unteachable,  aU  will  was  declared  to  be  foolish. 

Schopenhauer  was  led  into  his  pessimism  also  by 
the  spirit  of  opposition;  his  righteous  wrath  was 
aroused  by  the  sardonic  and  inhuman  optimism  of 
Hegel,  the  arguments  for  which  were  so  cogent,  so 
Calvinistic,  and  so  irrelevant  that  they  would,  have 
lost  none  of  their  force  if  they  had  been  proposed  in 
hell.  The  best  possible  world  and  the  worst  possible 
world  are,  indeed,  identical  for  that  philosophy. 
Schopenhauer   needed    to    change   notUng   in    the 


112   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


description  of  life,  as  the  other  idealists  conceived  it, 
in  order  to  prove  that  life  was  a  tragedy;    for  they 
were  as  romantic  as  himself  and  as  far  from  feeling 
the  intrinsic  value  of  happiness,  and  the  possibility 
of  real  progress.    Real  progress  has  little  to  do  with 
perpetual  evolution.    It  occurs  only  in  certain  places 
and  times,  when  nature  or  art  comes  to  the  assistance 
of  some  definite  interest  already  embodied,  as  the 
interest  in  security  and  mutual  confidence,  know- 
ledge, or  the  fine  arts  is  already  embodied  in  man- 
kind.     Schopenhauer  was   not  insensible   to   these 
achievements;    he  felt  by  instinct  the  infinity  and 
luxuriance  of  the  moral  world.    It  was  in  part  this 
secret  sympathy  with  nature   that  alienated  him 
from   Christianity  and   from   transcendental   meta- 
physics. But  because  natural  goods  cannot  be  desired 
or  possessed  for  ever,  he  thought  their  value  was 
cancelled,  even  for  those  who  desired  and  possessed 
them.    The  leaven  of  romanticism  was  still  at  work, 
forbidding  him  to  recognise  a  natural  order,  with 
which  a  vital  harmony  might  be  established.    The 
ground  of  life,  the  Will  in  all  things,  was  something 
lurid  ^nd  tempestuous,  itself  a  psychological  chaos. 
The  alternative  to  theism  m  the  mind  of  Schopenhauer 
was  not  naturalism  but  anarchy. 

This  romantic  travesty  of  life  and  this  conception 
of  metaphysical  anarchy  were  inherited  by  Nietzsche 


THE  BREACH  WITH  CHRISTIANITY    113 


if 


and  regarded  by  him  as  the  last  word  of  philosophy. 
But  he  made  the  breach  with  Christianity  still  wider. 
The  grief  of  Schopenhauer  in  the  presence  of  such  a 
world,  his  desperate  and  exotic  remedy — the  denial 
of  the  will — ^and  his  love  of  contemplation  were  all 
evidences  of  a  mind  still  half  Christian :  his  pessimism 
itself  was  so  much  homage  to  the  faith  he  had  lost. 
Such  backward  glances  were  not  for  the  impetuous 
Nietzsche,  who  felt  he  was  a  prophet  of  the  future^ 
and  really  was  one.  Romantic  anarchy  delighted  him; 
and  he  crowned  it  with  a  rakish  optimism,  as  with 
the  red  cap  of  Liberty.  He  was  in  hearty  sympathy 
with  absolute  Will;  he  praised  it  even  for  being  vain 
and  maleficent,  if  it  was  only  proud  enough  to  praise 
itself. 


NIETZSCHE  AND  SCHOPENHAUER     nj 


r 

I 


C£iAFT£R  X.I 

NIETZSCHE  AND  SCHOPENHAUER 

It  is  hardly  fair  to  a  writer  like  Nietzsche,  so  poetical, 
fragmentary,  and  immature,  to  judge  him  as  a  philo- 
sopher; yet  he  wished  to  be  so  judged,  and  planned 
9  system  which  was  to  be  an  emendation  of  that  of 
Schopenhauer*  The  will  to  live  would  become  the 
will  to  dominate;  pessimism  founded  on  reflection 
would  become  optimism  founded  on  courage;  the 
suspense  of  the  will  in  contemplation  would  yield  to 
a  more  biological  account  of  intelligence  and  taste; 
finally  in  the  place  of  pity  and  asceticism  (Schopen- 
hauer's two  principles  of  morals)  Nietzsche  would 
set  up  the  duty  of  asserting  the  will  at  all  costs  and 
being  cruelly  but  beautifully  strong. 

These  points  of  diflFerence  from  Schopenhauer 
cover  the  whole  philosophy  of  Nietzsche.  I  will 
consider  them  in  order,  leaving  the  last  for  the  next 
chapter. 

Tlie  change  from  "  the  will  to  live  *'  to  **  the  will 

to  be  powerful "  is  only  a  change  of  metaphors :  both 

are  used  merely  to  indicate  the  general  movement  of 

nature.     The  choice  of  a  psychological  symbol  for 

this  purpose  is  indifferent  scientifically,  since  the 

114 


facts  in  any  case  remain  the  same  and  our  know- 
ledge of  them  is  not  enlarged;  yet  it  is  an  interesting 
indication  of  the  mind  of  the  poet  using  it,  because 
whatever  a  man  knows  and  loves  best,  that  he  takes 
his  metaphors  from.  Nietzsche  had  his  reasons  for 
liking  to  call  the  universal  principle  a  lust  for  power. 
He  believed  he  was  the  herald  of  two  hundred  years 
of  war,  he  was  in  love  with  the  vague  image  of  a 
military  aristocracy,  and  he  was  not  without  a  certain 
biological  acumen. 

An  acorn  in  the  ground  does  not  strive  to  per- 
severe in  the  state  it  happens  to  be  in,  but  expands, 
absorbs  surrounding  elements,  and  transforms  them 
into  its  own  substance,  which  itself  changes  its  form. 
Here  then  is  a  will  to  grow,  not  simply  a  will  to  live 
or  to  preserve  oneself;  in  fact,  as  Nietzsche  eloquently 
said,  here  is  a  will  to  perish.  It  is  true  that  when 
the  oak  is  full  grown  it  seems  to  pass  to  the  defensive 
and  no  longer  manifests  the  will  either  to  perish  or 
to  grow.  Even  while  the  will  to  grow  is  operating, 
its  scope  is  not  indefinite.  It  would  be  grotesque  to. 
imagine  that  the  acorn,  like  the  ego  oif  German  philo- 
sophy, tended  to  annex  the  whole  earth  and  the  whole 
sky  and  to  make  a  single  oak  of  the  universe.  If  we 
take  a  broad  view,  perhaps  the  ancient  myth  that 
nature  tends  to  re-einbody  certain  fixed  types,  though 
inaccurate,  gives  a  better  picture  of  the  facts  than 


I     I 


II 


4 


III  I 


I 


16    EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


the  modem  myth  that  she  is  striving  to  change  in 
one  predetermined  direction.  Nevertheless,  the  fact 
that  Nietzsche's  attention  was  fascinated  by  the  will 
to  grow  and  to  dominate  shows  that  he  was  in  sym- 
padiy  with  young  things,  that  his  heart  was  big  with 
the  future,  and  that  his  age  believed  in  progress. 

The  change  from  pessimism  to  optimism,  verbally 
so  complete,  did  not  imply  any  divergence  between 
Nietzsche  and  Schopenhauer  in  their  description  of 
the  facts ;  it  was  all  a  matter  of  a  little  more  spirit 
in  the  younger  thinker  and  a  little  more  conscience 
in  the  elder.  Romantic  poets  and  their  heroes  are 
well  known  to  oscillate  between  passionate  despair 
and  passionate  enterprise.  Schopenhauer  affected 
passionate  despair,  Nietzsche  recommended  passionate 
enterprise,  each  being  wedded  exclusively  to  one  of 
those  moods  which  Faust  or  Byron  could  feel  alter- 
nately and  reduce  to  act  with  all  the  dashing  tumult 
of  anarchy*  The  value  which  the  world  has  in  the 
eyes  of  its  inhabitants  is  necessarily  mixed,  so  that 
a  sweeping  optimism  or  pessimism  can  be  only  a 
theoretic  pose,  false  to  the  natural  sentiment  even 
of  those  who  assume  it.  Both  are  impressionistic 
judgments  passed  on  the  world  at  large,  not  perhaps 
without  some  impertinence* 

Yet  it  is  these  poses  or  attitudes,  or,  if  you  like, 
these  impertinences,  that  give  importance  to  tran- 


NIETZSCHE  AND  SCHOPENHAUER     117 

scendental  philosophers;  it  is  their  representative  and 
contagious  side;  their  views  of  things  would  concern 
us  little,  if  it  was  the  things  themselves  that  we 
wished  to  understand,  but  our  whole  study  is  a  study 
in  romanticism.  The  temper  of  the  age  ignored  that 
man  is  a  teachable  animal  living  in  a  natural  world. 
All  that  was  a  vulgar  convention;  in  truth  a  dis- 
embodied Will  was  directed  on  any  and  every  ideal 
at  random,  and  when  any  of  these  fantastic  objects 
seemed  to  be  attained  nothing  was  really  accom- 
plished, nothing  was  accumulated  or  learned.  The 
wish  for  some  other  will-o'-the-wisp  immediately 
succeeded,  always  equally  passionate  and  equally 
foolish. 

It  is  amazing  that  such  a  picture  of  human  ex- 
perience should  have  met  with  anything  but  general 
derision;  but  when  people  read  books  they  compare 
them  with  other  books,  and  when  they  turn  to  things 
they  forget  books  altogether.  Hence  the  most  palpable 
falsehoods  are  held  by  general  consent  at  certain 
moments,  because  they  follow  logically  from  what 
the  books  of  the  previous  generation  had  maintained^ 
This  absurdity  of  Schopenhauer's  is  a  plausible  varia- 
tion of  idealism;  to  see  how  absurd  it  is  you  must 
remember  the  facts  of  life,  the  existence  of  any  degree 
of  civilisation  or  progress.  In  these  the  travail  of 
human  nature  appears;    for  human  nature  is  not 


k 


XI8    EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


I 


merely  a  name  for  a  certain  set  of  passions  known  to 
Kterature;  in  that  sense  Schopenhauer  fully  acknow* 
kdged  it,  and  even  thought  it  immutable ;  it  is  rather 
the  constitution  of  an  animal  capable  of  training  and 
development.  What  is  more  patent  than  that  a  man 
may  learn  something  by  experience  and  may  be 
trained  i  But  if  he  can  be  trained  he  is  capable  of 
adaptation  and,  therefore,  of  happiness,  and  the 
preposterous  assertion  that  all  desires  are  equally 
arbitrary  and  equally  fruitless  is  blown  to  the  winds. 
The  belief  in  a  romantic  chaos  lends  itself  to 
pessimism,  but  it  also  lends  itself  to  absolute  self- 
assertion.  Elant  had  boasted  that  he  had  removed 
knowledge  in  order  to  make  room  for  faith;  in  other 
words,  he  had  returned  to  chaos  in  order  to  find 
freedom.  The  great  egotists,  who  detested  the  pres- 
sure of  a  world  they  had  not  posited  or  created, 
followed  gladly  in  that  path;  but  Schopenhauer  was 
not  an  egotist.  like  Goethe  he  was  probably  more 
selfish  personally  than  those  other  philosophers  whom 
their  very  egotism  had  made  zealous  and  single- 
minded;  but  in  imagination  and  feeling  he  was,  like 
Goethe,  genial  and  humane:  the  freedom  and  ex- 
uberance of  nature  impressed  him  more  than  his 
own.  Had  he  been  an  egotist,  as  Fichte,  Hegel,  and 
Nietzsche  were,  he  might  have  been  an  optimist  like 
them.  He  was  rather  a  happy  man,  hugely  enjoying 


NIETZSCHE  AND  SCHOPENHAUER    119 


a  great  many  things,  among  them  food  and  music; 
and  he  taught  that  music  was  a  direct  transcript  of 
the  tormented  will  to  live.  How  simple  it  would 
have  been  for  him,  if  he  had  been  an  egotist,  to 
enjoy  the  spectacle  of  that  tormented  will  as  much  as 
the  music  which  was  its  faithful  image!  But  no; 
such  aesthetic  cruelty,  which  was  Nietzsche's  delight, 
would  have  revolted  Schopenhauer.  He  thought 
tragedy  beautiful  because  it  detached  us  from  a 
troubled  world  and  did  not  think  a  troubled  world 
good,  as  those  unspeakable  optimists  did,  because  it 
made  such  a  fine  tragedy.  It  is  pleasant  to  find 
that  among,  all  these  philosophers  one  at  least  was 
a  gentleman. 

If  Will  is  the  sole  substance  or  force  in  the  universe, 
it  must  be  present  in  everything  that  exists,  yet 
Schopenhauer  affirmed  that  it  was  absent  in  aesthetic 
contemplation;  and  he  looked  to  an  ultimate  denial 
of  the  Will,  which  if  it  was  to  be  an  act  and  not 
merely  a  void  would  evidently  be  impossible  on  his 
principles.  The  Will  might  well  say  to  those  who 
attempted  to  deny  it :  "  They  reckon  ill  who  leave 
me  out;  when  me  they  fly,  I  am  the  wings.'*  In 
perceiving  and  correcting  this  contradiction,  Nietzsche 
certainly  improved  the  technique  of  the  system. 

Yet  that  contradiction  was  not  substantial;  it  was 

verbal  merely,  and  due  to  the  fond  use  of  the.  term 


1  ; 


: 


I20  EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


I 


I 


Will  for  what  might  more  properly  be  called  matter, 
^ergy,  or  movement.  Will  taken  in  the  metaphorical 
sense  can  never  be  in  abeyance,  so  long  as  anything 
is  going  on;  but  will  taken  in  its  proper  sense  is  in 
abeyance  often;  and  this  is  what  Schopenhauer  saw 
and  meant  to  say.  Actual  and  conscious  will  is  a 
passing  phenomenon;  it  is  so  little  necessary  to  life 
that  it  always  disappears  when  life  is  at  its  height. 
All  pure  pleasures,  including  those  of  seeing  and 
thinking,  are  without  it:  they  are  ingenuous,  and 
terminate  in  their  present  object.  A  philosopher 
should  have  learned  from  Aristotle,  if  not  from  his 
own  experience,  that  at  the  acme  of  life  we  live  in  the 
eternal,  and  that  then,  as  Schopenhauer  said,  we  no 
longer  pry  but  gaze,  and  are  freed  from  willing. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  Nietzsche  was  not  very 
happy  and  witty  in  his  description  of  the  passions 
that  dominate  artists  and  philosophers,  and  in  urging 
that  the  life  of  the  spirit  was  an  impassioned  thing. 
To  prove  it,  he  might  have  quoted  Schopenhauer 
himself,  in  those  moving  passages  where  he  describes 
the  ecstasy  of  thought  and  the  spell  of  beauty.  It 
is  not  the  dead  or  the  bloodless  that  have  such  feel- 
ings. Of  course,  if  the  operations  of  the  brain,  and 
the  whole  instinctive  life  of  the  soul,  were  interrupted 
neither  these  feelings  nor  any  others  would  arise. 
This  was  at  bottom  Schopenhauer's  conviction.   His 


NIETZSCHE  AND  SCHOPENHAUER     121 

great  intuition,  the  corner-stone  of  his  philosophy, 
was  precisely  the  priority  of  automatism  and  instinct 
over  the  intellect.  His  only  error  came  from  having 
given  to  these  underlying  processes  the  name  of  Will, 
when  properly  the  will  is  one  expression  of  them  only, 
as  the  intellect  is. 

Nietzsche,  who  adopted  the  same  metaphor,  was 
led  by  it  into  the  very  confusion  which  he  criticised 
in  Schopenhauer.  Nietzsche  had  no  great  technical 
competence:  he  saw  the  inconsistency  only  when 
he  disliked  the  result;  when  the  result  fell  in  with 
his  first  impressions  he  repeated  the  inconsistency. 
He  often  condemned  other  moralists  for  being  enemies 
to  life:  he  reproached  the  greater  part  of  mankind 
for  loving  inglorious  ease  and  resenting  the  sufferings 
mseparable  from  the  will  to  be  mighty  and  to  perish. 
But  this  churlish  attitude  of  the  vulgar  would  be 
quite  impossible  if  the  heroic  will  to  be  powerful  were 
the  essence  of  everybody  and  even  of  material  things. 
If  I  am  nothing  but  the  will  to  grow,  how  can  I  ever 
will  to  shrink  ? 

But  this  inconsistency  in  Nietzsche,  like  that  in 
Schopenhauer,  was  an  honourable  one  that  came  of 
forgetting  a  false  generalisation  in  the  presence  of  a 
clear  fact.  That  the  will  to  be  powerful  is  everywhere 
was  a  false  generalisation;  but  it  was  a  clear  fact 
that  some  people  are  pious  Christians  or  Epicurean 


122   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

philosophers,  who  do  not  care  at  aU  about  con- 
quering the  world.  They  want  to  be  let  alone, 
and  perhaps  have  a  shrewd  suspicion  that  no  one 
lives  under  such  dire  compulsions  as  he  who  under- 
takes to  tyrannise  over  others.  This  slave-morality 
of  theirs  might  be  called  Will,  though  it  is  rather 
instinct  and  habit;  but  it  is  certainly  not  a  will  to 
be  powerful:  it  is  the  opposite  of  that  passion.  Thus 
Nietzsche,  by  an  honest  self-contradiction,  pointed 
to  people  who  denied  the  will  to  be  powerful,  in 
order  to  abuse  them,  just  as  Schopenhauer  had 
pointed  to  people  who  denied  or  suspended  the  will 
to  live,  in  order  to  praise  them. 


CHAPTER  XII 


THE  ETHICS   OF  NIETZSCHE 


Nietzsche  occasionally  spoke  disparagingly  of 
morality,  as  if  the  word  and  the  thing  had  got  a 
little  on  his  nerves;  and  some  of  his  best-known 
phrases  might  give  the  impression  that  he  wished  to 
drop  the  distinction  between  good  and  evil  and 
transcend  ethics  altogether.  Such  a  thought  would 
not  have  been  absurd  in  itself  or  even  unphilosophical. 
Many  serious  thinkers,  Spinoza  for  instance,  have 
beheved  that  everything  that  happens  is  equally 
necessary  and  equally  expressive  of  the  will  of  God, 
be  it  favourable  or  unfavourable  to  our  special 
interests  and,  therefore,  called  by  us  good  or  bad. 
A  too  reverent  immersion  in  nature  and  history  con* 
vinces  them  that  to  think  any  part  of  reality  better 
or  worse  than  the  rest  is  impertinent  or  even  impious. 
It  is  true  that  in  the  end  these  philosophers  usually 
stultify  themselves  and  declare  enthusiastically  that 
whatever  is  is  right.  This  rapturous  feeling  can  over- 
come anybody  in  certain  moods,  as  it  sometimes 
overcame  Nietzsche;  but  in  yielding  to  it,  besides 
contradicting  all  other  moral  judgments,  these  mystics 

break  their  diflScult  resolution  never  to  judge  at  all. 

123 


m 


\ 


Nietzsche,  however,  was  entirely  free  from  this 
divine  impediment  in  morals.  The  courage  to  cling 
to  what  his  soul  loved— and  this  courage  is  the  essence 
of  morality— was  conspicuous  in  him.  He  was  a  poet, 
a  critic,  a  lover  of  form  and  of  distinctions.  Few 
persons  have  ever  given  such  fierce  importance  to 
their  personal  taste.  What  he  disliked  to  think  of, 
say  democracy,  he  condemned  with  the  fulminations 
of  a  god;  what  he  Kked  to  think  of,  power,  he  seri- 
ously commanded  man  and  nature  to  pursue  for  their 
single  object. 

What  Nietzsche  disparaged,  then,  under  the  name 
of  morality  was  not  all  morality,  for  he  had  an  enthu* 
siastic  master-morality  of  his  own  to  impose.  He 
was  thinkmg  only  of  the  Christian  virtues  and 
especially  of  a  certain  Protestant  and  Kantian 
moralism  with  which  perhaps  he  had  been  surfeited. 
This  moralism  conceived  that  duty  was  something 
absolute  and  not  a  method  of  securing  whatever 
goods  of  all  sorts  are  attainable  by  action.  The  latter 
is  the  common  and  the  soimd  opinion,  maintained, 
for  instance,  by  Aristotle;  but  Nietzsche,  who  was 
not  humble  enough  to  learn  very  much  by  study, 
thought  he  was  propounding  a  revolutionary  doctrine 
when  he  put  goods  and  evils  beyond  and  above  right 
and  wrong:  for  this  is  all  that  his  Jenseits  von  Gut 
und  BSsi  amounts  to.     Whatever  seemed  to  him 


THE  ETHICS  OF  NIETZSCHE  125 


admirable,  beautiful,  eligible,  whatever  was  good  in 
the  sense  opposed  not  to  bose  but  to  schlechty  Nietzsche 
loved  with  jealous  affection.  Hence  his  ire  against 
Christianity,  which  he  thought  renounced  too  much. 
Hence  his  hatred  of  moralism,  which  in  raising  duty 
to  the  irresponsible  throne  of  the  absolute  had  super- 
stitiously  sacrificed  half  the  goods  of  life.  Nietzsche, 
then,  far  from  transcending  ethics,  re-established  it 
on  its  true  foundations,  which  is  not  to  say  that  the 
sketchy  edifice  which  he  planned  to  raise  on  these 
foundations  was  in  a  beautiful  style  of  architecture 
or  could  stand  at  all. 

The  first  principle  of  his  ethics  was  that  the  good 
is  power.  But  this  word  power  seems  to  have  had  a 
great  range  of  meanings  in  his  mind.  Sometimes  it 
suggests  animal  strength  and  size,  as  in  the  big  blonde 
beast;  sometimes  vitality,  sometimes  fortitude,  some- 
times contempt  for  the  will  of  others,  sometimes  (and 
this  is  perhaps  the  meaning  he  chiefly  intended) 
dominion  over  natural  forces  and  over  the  people, 
that  is  to  say,  wealth  and  military  power.  It  is 
characteristic  of  this  whole  school  that  it  confuses 
the  laws  which  are  supposed  to  preside  over  the 
movement  of  things  with  the  good  results  which  they 
may  involve;  so  Nietzsche  confuses  his  biological 
insight,  that  all  life  is  the  assertion  of  some  sort  of 
power-^^the  power  to  breathe,  for  instance — with  the 


II 


126   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


admiration  he  felt  for  a  masterful  egotism.   But  even 
if  we  identify  life  or  any  kind  of  existence  with  the 
exertion  of  strength,  the  kinds  of  strength  exerted 
will  be  heterogeneous  and  not  always  compatible. 
The  strength  of  Lucifer  does  not  insure  victory  in 
war;   it  pomts  rather  to  failure  in  a  world  peopled 
by  millions  of  timid,  pious,  and  democratic  persons. 
Hence  we  find  Nietzsche  asking  himself  plaintively, 
"Why  are  the  feeble  victorious?  "  The  fact  rankled 
in  his  bosom  that  in  the  ancient  world  martial  aris- 
tocracies had  succumbed  before  Christianity,  and  in 
the  modem  world  before  democracy.    By  strength, 
then,  he  could  not  mean  the  power  to  survive,  by 
being  as  flexible  as  circumstances  may  require.    He 
did  not  refer  to  the  strength  of  majorities,  nor  to  the 
strength  of  vermin.    At  the  same  time  he  did  not 
refer  to  moral  strength,  for  of  moral  strength  he  had 
no  idea. 

The  arts  give  power,  but  only  in  channels  pre- 
scribed by  their  own  principles,  not  by  the  will  of 
untrained  men.  To  be  trained  is  to  be  tamed  and 
harnessed,  an  accession  of  power  detestable  to 
Nietzsche.  His  Zarathustra  had  the  power  of  dancing, 
also  of  charming  serpents  and  eagles:  no  wonder  that 
he  missed  the  power,  bestowed  by  goodness,  of  charm- 
ing and  guiding  men;  and  a  Terpsichorean  autocrat 
would  be  hard  to  imagine.   A  man  intent  on  algebra 


THE  ETHICS  OF  NIETZSCHE  127 


or  on  painting  is  not  striving  to  rule  anybody;  his 
dominion  over  painting  or  algebra  is  chiefly  a  matter 
of  concentration  and  self-forgetfulness.  So  dominion 
over  the  passions  changes  them  from  attempts  to 
appropriate  anything  into  sentiments  of  the  mind, 
colouring  a  world  which  is  no  longer  coveted.  To 
attain  such  autumnal  wisdom  is,  if  you  like,  itself 
a  power  of  feeling  and  a  kind  of  strength;  but  it  is 
not  helpful  in  conquering  the  earth. 

Nietzsche  was  personally  more  philosophical  than 
his  philosophy.  His  talk  about  power,  harshness,  and 
superb  immorality  was  the  hobby  of  a  harmless 
young  scholar  and  constitutional  invalid.  He  did 
not  crave  in  the  least  either  wealth  or  empire.  What 
he  loved  was  solitude,  nature,  music,  books.  But  his 
imagination,  like  his  judgment,  was  captious;  it 
could  not  dwell  on  reality,  but  reacted  furiously 
against  it.  Accordingly,  when  he  speaks  of  the  will 
to  be  powerful,  power  is  merely  an  eloquent  word 
on  his  Ups.  It  symbolises  the  escape  from  mediocrity. 
What  power  would  be  when  attained  and  exercised 
remains  entirely  beyond  his  horizon.  What  meets  us 
everywhere  is  the  sense  of  impotence  and  a  passionate 
rebellion  against  it. 

The.  phrases  in  which  Nietzsche  condensed  and 
fek.  his  thought  were  brilliant,  but  they  were  seldom 
justi   We  may  perhaps  see  the  principle  of  his  ethics 


118   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

better  if  we  forget  for  a  moment  the  will  to  be  power- 
ful and  consider  this :  that  he  knew  no  sort  of  good 
except  the  beautiful,  and  no  sort  of  beauty  except 
romantic  stress.  He  was  a  belated  prophet  of  roman- 
ticism. He  wrote  its  epitaph,  in  which  he  praised 
it  more  extravagantly  than  anybody,  when  it  was 
alive,  had  had  the  courage  to  do. 

Consider,  for  example,  what  he  said  about  truth. 
Since  men  were  governed  solely  by  the  will  to  be 
powerful,  the  truth  for  its  own  sake  must  be  moon- 
shine to  them.  They  would  wish  to  cultivate  such 
ideas,  whether  true  or  false,  as  might  be  useful  to 
their  ambition.  Nietzsche  (more  candid  in  this  than 
some  other  pragmatists)  confessed  that  truth  itself 
did  not  interest  him;  it  was  ugly;  the  bracing  atmo- 
sphere of  falsehood,  passion,  and  subjective  perspec- 
tives was  the  better  thing.  Sometimes,  indeed,  a 
more  wistful  mood  overtook  him,  and  he  wondered 
whether  the  human  mind  would  be  able  to  endure 
the  light  of  truth.  That  was  the  great  question  of 
the  future.  We  may  agree  that  a  mind  without 
poetry,  fiction,  and  subjective  colouring  would  not 
be  human,  nor  a  mind  at  all;  and  that  neither  truth 
nor  the  knowledge  of  truth  would  have  any  intrinsic 
value  if  nobody  cared  about  it  for  its  own  sake.  But 
some  men  do  care;  and  in  ignoring  this  fact  Nietzsche 
expresses  the  false  and  pitiful  notion  that  we  can  be 


THE  ETHICS  OF  NIETZSCHE 


129 


interested  in  nothing  except  in  ourselves  and  our 
own  future.  I  am  solitary,  says  the  romantic  egotist, 
and  sufficient  unto  myself.  The  world  is  my  idea, 
new  every  day:  what  can  I  have  to  do  with  truth ? 

This  impulse  to  turn  one's  back  on  truth,  whether 
in  contempt  or  in  despair,  has  a  long  history.  Lessing 
had  said  that  he  preferred  the  pursuit  of  truth  to  the 
truth  itself;  but  if  we  take  this  seriously  (as  possibly 
it  was  not  meant)  the  pursuit  of  truth  at  once  changes 
its  character.  It  can  no  longer  be  the  pursuit  of 
truth,  truth  not  being  wanted,  but  only  the  pursuit 
of  some  fresh  idea.  Whether  one  of  these  ideas  or 
another  comes  nearer  to  the  truth  would  be  unim- 
portant and  undiscoverable.  Any  idea  will  do,  so 
long  as  it  is  pregnant  with  another  that  may  presently 
take  its  place;  and  as  presumably  error  will  pre- 
cipitate new  ideas  more  readily  than  truth,  we  might 
almost  find  it  implied  in  Lessing's  maxim  that,  as 
Nietzsche  maintained,  what  is  really  good  is  neither 
truth  nor  the  pursuit  of  truth  (for  you  might  find 
it,  and  what  would  you  do  then?),  but  rather  a 
perpetual  flux  of  errors. 

This  view  is  also  implied  in  the  very  prevalent 
habit  of  regarding  opinions  as  justified  not  by  their 
object  but  by  their  date.  The  intellectual  ignominy 
of  believing  what  we  believe  simply  because  of  the 
time  and  place  of  our  birth,  escapes  many  evolu- 


130   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


tionists.  Far  from  trying  to  overcome  this  natural 
prejudice  of  position,  they  raise  it  into  a  point  of 
pride.  They  declare  all  opinions  ever  held  in  the  past 
to  be  superseded,  and  are  apparently  content  that 
their  own  should  be  superseded  to-morrow,  but  mean- 
time they  cover  you  with  obloquy  if  you  are  so  back- 
ward or  so  forward  as  not  to  agree  with  them  to-day. 
They  accept  as  inevitable  the  total  dominion  of  the 
point  of  view.  Each  new  date,  even  in  the  life  of  an 
individual  thinker,  is  expected  by  them  to  mark  a 
new  phase  of  doctrine.  Indeed,  truth  is  an  object 
which  transcendental  philosophy  cannot  envisage: 
the  absolute  ego  must  be  satisfied  with  consistency. 
How  should  the  truth,  actual,  natural,  or  divine,  be 
an  expression  of  the  living  will  that  attempts,  or  in 
their  case  despairs,  to  discover  it  i  Yet  that  every- 
thing, even  the  truth,  is  an  expression  of  the  living 
will,  is  the  comer-stone  of  this  philosophy. 

Consider  further  the  spirit  in  which  Nietzsche 
condemned  Christianity  and  the  Christian  virtues. 
Many  people  have  denounced  Christianity  on  the 
ground  that  it  was  false  or  tyrannical,  while  perhaps 
admitting  that  it  was  comforting  or  had  a  good 
moral  influence.  Nietzsche  denounced  it — ^and  in 
immeasured  terms— on  the  ground  that  (while,  of 
course,  as  true  as  any  other  vital  lie)  it  was  mean, 
depressing,  slavish,  and  plebeian.    How  beastly  was 


THE  ETHICS  OF  NIETZSCHE 


131 


the  precept  of  love!  Actually  to  love  all  these  gro- 
tesque bipeds  was  degrading.  A  lover  of  the  beauti- 
ful must  wish  almost  all  his  neighbours  out  of  the 
way.  Compassion,  too,  was  a  lamentable  way  of 
assimilating  oneself  to  evil.  That  contagious  misery 
spoiled  one's  joy,  freedom,  and  courage.  Disease 
should  not  be  nursed  but  cauterised;  the  world  must 
be  made  clean. 

Now  there  is  a  sort  of  love  of  mankind,  a  jealous 
love  of  what  man  might  be,  in  this  much  decried 
maxim  of  unmercifulness.  Nietzsche  rebelled  at  the 
thought  of  endless  wretchedness,  pervasive  medio- 
crity, crying  children,  domestic  drudges,  and  pom- 
pous fools  for  ever.  Die  Erie  war  zu  lange  schon 
ein  Irrenhaus  I  His  heart  was  tender  enough,  but 
his  imagination  was  impatient.  When  he  praised 
cruelty,  it  was  on  the  ground  that  art  was  cruel, 
that  it  made  beauty  out  of.  suffering.  Suffering, 
therefore,  was  good,  and  so  was  crime,  which  made 
life  keener.  Only  crime,  he  said,  raises  a  man  high 
enough  for  the  lightning  to  strike  him.  In  the  hope 
of  sparing  some  obscure  person  a  few  groans  or  tears, 
would  you  deprive  the  romantic  hero  of  so  sublime 
a  death  ? 

Christians,  too,  might  say  they  had  their  heroes, 
their  saints;  but  what  sort  of  eminence  was  that? 
It  was  produced  by  stifling  half  the  passions.     A 


i\ 


o^(^ 


\ 


132   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

sister  of  charity  could  not  be  an  Arminius ;  devotion 
to  such  remedial  offices  spoilt  the  glory  of  life.  Holi- 
ness was  immoral;  it  was  a  half-suicide.  All  ex- 
perience, the  ideal  of  Faust,  was  what  a  spirited 
man  must  desire.  All  experience  would  involve,  I 
suppose,  passing  through  all  the  sensations  of  a 
murderer,  a  maniac,  and  a  toad;  even  through  those 
of  a  saint  or  a  sister  of  charity.  But  the  romantic 
mind  despises  results;  it  is  satisfied  with  poses. 

Consider,  too,  the  romantic  demand  for  a  violent 
chiaroscuro,  a  demand  which  blossoms  into  a  whole 
system  of  ethics.  Good  and  evil,  we  are  told,  en- 
hance one  another,  like  light  and  shade  in  a  picture; 
without  evil  there  can  be  no  good,  so  to  diminish  the 
one  is  to  undermine  the  other,  and  the  greatest  and 
most  heroic  man  is  he  who  not  only  does  most  good 
but  also  most  harm.  In  his  love  of  mischief,  in  his 
tenderness  for  the  adventurer  who  boldly  inflicts 
injury  and  suffering  on  others  and  on  himself,  in 
order  to  cut  a  more  thrilling  and  stupendous  figure 
in  his  own  eyes,  Nietzsche  gave  this  pernicious 
doctrine  its  frankest  expression;  but  unfortunately 
it  was  not  wholly  his  own.  In  its  essence  it  belongs 
to  Hegel,  and  under  various  sophistical  disguises  it 
has  been  adopted  by  all  his  academic  followers  in 
England  and  America.  The  arguments  used  to  defend 
it  are  old  sophisms  borrowed  from  the  Stoics,  who 


THE  ETHICS  OF  NIETZSCHE 


133 


had  turned  the  physical  doctrine  of  Heraclitus,  that 
everything  is  a  mixture  of  contraries,  into  an  argu- 
ment for  resignation  to  inevitable  evils  and  detach- 
ment from  tainted  goods.  The  Stoics,  who  were 
neither  romantic  nor  worldly,  used  these  sophisms 
in  an  attempt  to  extirpate  the  passions,  not  to  justify 
them.  They  were  sufficiently  refuted  by  the  excellent 
Plutarch  where  he  observes  that  according  to  this 
logic  it  was  requisite  and  necessary  that  Thersites 
should  be  bald  in  order  that  Achilles  might  have 
leonine  hair.  The  absurdity  is,  indeed,  ludicrous,  if 
we  are  thinking  of  real  things  and  of  the  goods  and 
evils  of  experience;  but  egotists  never  think  of  that; 
what  they  always  think  of  is  the  picture  of  those 
realities  in  their  imagination.  For  the  observer, 
effects  of  contrast  do  alter  the  values  of  the  elements 
considered;  and,  indeed,  the  elements  themselves, 
if  one  is  very  unsympathetic,  may  not  have  at  all 
in  contemplation  the  quality  they  have  in  experience : 
whence  aesthetic  cruelty.  The  respect  which  Hegel 
and  Nietzsche  have  for  those  sophisms  becomes 
intelligible  when  we  remember  what  imperturbable 
egotists  they  were. 

This  egotism  in  morals  is  partly  mystical.  There 
is  a  luxurious  joy  in  healing  the  smart  of  evil  in 
one's  mind,  without  needing  to  remove  or  diminish 
the  evil  in  the  world.    The  smart  may  be  healed  by 


II 


I 


34   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


nursing  the  conviction  that  evil  after  all  is  good,  no 
matter  how  much  of  it  there  is  or  how  much  of  it 
we  do.  In  part,  however,  this  egotism  is  romantic; 
it  does  not  ask  to  be  persuaded  that  evil,  in  the  end, 
is  good.  It  feels  that  evil  is  good  in  the  present ;  it 
is  so  intense  a  thing  to  feel  and  so  exciting  a  thing 
to  do.  Here  we  have  what  Nietzsche  wished  to  bring 
about,  a  reversal  of  all  values.  To  do  evil  is  the  true 
virtue,  and  to  be  good  is  the  most  hopeless  vice. 
Milk  is  for  babes ;  your  strong  man  should  be  soaked 
in  blood  and  in  alcohol.  We  should  live  perilously; 
and  as  material  life  is  the  power  to  digest  poisons, 
so  true  excellence  is  the  power  to  commit  all  manner 
of  crimes,  and  to  survive. 

That  there  is  no  God  is  proved  by  Nietzsche  prag- 
matically, on  the  ground  that  belief  in  the  existence 
of  God  would  have  made  him  uncomfortable.  Not 
at  all  for  the  reason  that  might  first  occur  to  us: 
to  imagine  himself  a  lost  soul  has  always  been  a 
point  of  pride  with  the  romantic  genius.  The  reason 
was  that  if  there  had  been  any  gods  he  would  have 
found  it  intolerable  not  to  be  a  god  himself.  Poor 
Nietzsche!  The  laurels  of  the  Almighty  would  not 
let  him  sleep. 

It  is  hard  to  know  if  we  should  be  more  deceived 
in  taking  these  sallies  seriously  or  in  not  taking 
them  so.    On  the  one  hand  it  all  seems  the  swagger 


THE  ETHICS  OF  NIETZSCHE 


135 


i 


of  an  immature,  half-playful  mind,  Uke  a  child  that 
tells  you  he  will  cut  your  head  off.  The  dreamy 
impulse,  in  its  inception,  is  sincere  enough,  but  there 
is  no  vestige  of  any  understanding  of  what  it  pro- 
poses, of  its  conditions,  or  of  its  results.  On  the  other 
hand  these  explosions  are  symptomatic;  there  stirs 
behind  them  unmistakably  an  elemental  force.  That 
an  attitude  is  foolish,  incoherent,  disastrous,  proves 
nothing  against  the  depth  of  the  instinct  that  inspires 
it.  Who  could  be  more  intensely  unintelligent  than 
Luther  or  Rousseau  ?  Yet  the  world  followed  them, 
not  to  turn  back.  The  molecular  forces  of  society, 
so  to  speak,  had  already  undermined  the  systems 
which  these  men  denounced.  If  the  systems  have 
survived  it  is  only  because  the  reformers,  in  their 
intellectual  helplessness,  could  supply  nothing  to 
take  their  place.  So  Nietzsche,  in  his  genial  im- 
becility, betrays  the  shifting  of  great  subterranean 
forces.  What  he  said  may  be  nothing,  but  the  fact 
that  he  said  it  is  all-important.  Out  of  such  wild 
intuitions,  because  the  heart  of  the  child  was  in  them, 
the  man  of  the  future  may  have  to  build  his  philosophy. 
We  should  forgive  Nietzsche  his  boyish  blasphemies. 
He  hated  with  clearness,  if  he  did  not  know  what  to 
love. 


Jl 


i 


CHAPTER  XIII 


THE   SUPERMAN 


H 


I: 


In  his  views  on  matters  of  fact  Nietzsche,  as  becomes 

the  naive  egotist,  was  quite  irresponsible.    If  he  said 

the  course  of  history  repeated  itself  in  cycles,  it  was 

because  the  idea  pleased  him;   it  seemed  a  symbol 

of  self-approval  on  the  world's  part.   If  he  hailed  the 

advent  of  a  race  of  men  superior  to  ourselves  and  of 

stronger  fibre,  it  was  because  human  life  as  it  is,  and 

especially  his  own  life,  repelled  him.  He  was  sensitive 

and,  therefore,  censorious.    He  gazed  about  him,  he 

gazed  at  himself,  he  remembered  the  disappointing 

frailties  and  pomposity  of  the  great  man,  Wagner, 

whom  he  had  once  idolised.     His  optimism  for  the 

moment  yielded  to  his  sincerity.    He  would  sooner 

abolish  than  condone  such  a  world,  and  he  fled  to 

some  solitary  hillside  by  the  sea,  saying  to  himself 

that  man  was  a  creature  to  be  superseded. 

Dissatisfaction  with  the  actual  is  what  usually 

leads  people  to  frame  ideals  at  all,  or  at  least  to  hold 

them  fast;    but  such  a  negative  motive  leaves  the 

ideal  vague  and  without  consistency.     If  we  could 

suddenly  have  our  will,  we  should  very  likely  find 

the  result  trivial  or  horrible.     So  the  superman  of 

136 


THE  SUPERMAN 


137 


Nietzsche  might  prove,  if  by  magic  he  could  be 
realised.  To  frame  solid  ideals,  which  would,  in  fact, 
be  better  than  actual  things,  is  not  granted  to  the 
merely  irritable  poet ;  it  is  granted  only  to  the  master- 
workman,  to  the  modeller  of  some  given  substance 
to  some  given  use — things  which  define  his  aspira- 
tion, and  separate  what  is  relevant  and  glorious  in 
his  dreams  from  that  large  part  of  them  which  is 
merely  ignorant  and  peevish.  It  was  not  for  Nietzsche 
to  be  an  artist  in  morals  and  to  institute  anything 
coherent,  even  in  idea. 

The  superman  of  Nietzsche  is  rendered  the  more 
chimerical  by  the  fact  that  he  must  contradict  not 
only  the  common  man  of  the  present  but  also  the 
superior  men,  the  half-superhuman  men,  of  the  past. 
To  transcend  humanity  is  no  new  ambition;  that 
has  always  been  the  effort  of  Indian  and  Christian 
religious  discipline  and  of  Stoic  philosophy.  But  this 
spiritual  superiority,  Uke  that  of  artists  and  poets, 
has  come  of  abstraction;  a  superiority  to  life,  in  that 
these  minds  were  engrossed  in  the  picture  or  lesson 
of  hfe  rather  than  in  living;  and  if  they  powerfully 
affected  the  world,  as  they  sometimes  did,  it  was  by 
bringing  down  into  it  something  supermundane,  the 
arresting  touch  of  an  ulterior  wisdom.  Nietzsche,  on 
the  contrary,  even  more  than  most  modem  philo- 
sophers, loved  mere  Hfe  with  the  pathetic  intensity  of 


|i 


,  # 

f 


I. 


138    EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

the  wounded  beast;  his  superman  must  not  rise 
above  our  common  condition  by  his  purely  spiritual 
resources,  or  by  laying  up  his  treasure  in  any  sort  of 
heaven.  He  must  be  not  a  superior  man  but  a  kind 
of  physiological  superman,  a  griffin  in  soul,  if  not  in 
body,  who  instead  of  labouring  hands  and  religious 
faith  should  have  eagle's  wings  and  the  claws  of  a 
lion.  His  powers  should  be  superior  to  ours  by 
resembling  those  of  fiercer  and  wilder  animals.  The 
things  that  make  a  man  tame — ^Nietzsche  was  a 
retired  professor  living  in  a  boarding-house — ^must  be 
changed  into  their  opposites.  But  man  has  been 
tamed  by  agriculture,  material  arts,  children,  ex- 
perience; therefore  these  things  are  to  be  far  from 
the  superman.  If  he  must  resemble  somebody,  it 
will  be  rather  the  condottieri  of  the  renaissance  or  the 
princes  and  courtiers  of  the  seventeenth  century; 
Caesar  Borgia  is  the  supreme  instance.  He  must  have 
a  splendid  presence  and  address,  gallantry,  contempt 
for  convention,  loyalty  to  no  country,  no  woman, 
and  no  idea,  but  always  a  buoyant  and  lordly  asser- 
tion of  instinct  and  of  self.  In  the  helter-skelter 
of  his  irritable  genius,  Nietzsche  jumbled  together 
the  ferocity  of  solitary  beasts,  the  indifference  and 
hauteur  of  patricians,  and  the  antics  of  revellers,  and 
out  of  that  mixture  he  hoped  to  evoke  the  rulers  of 
the  coming  age. 


THE  SUPERMAN 


139 


How  could  so  fantastic  an  ideal  impose  on  a  keen 
satirist  like  Nietzsche  and  a  sincere  lover  of  excel- 
lence?     Because  true  human  excellence  seemed  to 
him  hostile  to  life,  and  he  felt— this  was  his  strong 
and  sane  side,  his  lien  on  the  future— that  life  must 
be  accepted  as  it  is  or  may  become,  and  false  beliefs, 
hollow  demands,  and  hypocritical,  forced  virtues  must 
be  abandoned.     This  new  wisdom  was  that  which 
Goethe,  too,  had  felt  and  practised;  and  of  all  masters 
of  life  Goethe  was  the  one  whom  Nietzsche  could  best 
understand.    But  a  master  of  life,  without  being  in 
the  least  hostile  to  life,  since  he  fulfils  it,  nevertheless 
uses  life  for  ends  which  transcend  it.    Even  Goethe, 
omnivorous  and  bland  as  he  was,  transcended  life  in 
depicting  and  judging  and  blessing  it.     The  saints 
and  the  true  philosophers  have  naturally  emphasised 
more  this  renunciation  of  egotism:    they  have  seen 
all  things  in  the  light  of  eternity— that  is,  as  they 
are  in  truth — and  have  consequently  felt  a  reason- 
able   contempt    for    mere   living   and    mere    dying; 
and  in  that  precisely  lies  moral  greatness.     Here 
Nietzsche  could  not  follow;    rationality  chilled  him; 
he  craved  vehemence. 

How  life  can  be  fulfilled  and  made  beautiful  by 
reason  was  never  better  shown  than  by  the  Greeks, 
both  by  precept  and  example.  Nietzsche  in  his  youth 
was  a  professor  of  Greek  literature :  one  would  have 


!    I 


r 


i 


140   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

expected  his  superman  to  be  a  sort  of  Greek  hero. 
Something  of  the  Dorian  harshness  in  beauty,  some- 
thing of  the  Pindaric  high-bom  and  silent  victor  may- 
have  been  fused  into  Nietzsche's  ideal;  certainly 
Bacchic  freedom  and  ardour  were  to  enter  in.  But 
on  the  whole  it  is  remarkable  how  little  he  learned 
from  the  Greeks,  no  modesty  or  reverence,  no  joy 
in  order  and  in  loveliness,  no  sense  for  friendship, 
none  for  the  sanctity  of  places  and  institutions. 
He  repeated  the  paradoxes  of  some  of  their  sophists, 
without  remembering  how  their  wise  men  had  refuted 
them.  For  example,  he  gave  a  new  name  and  a 
new  prominence  to  the  distinction  between  what  he 
called  the  Dionysiac  and  the  Apollonian  elements 
in  Greek  genius.  He  saw  how  false  was  that  white- 
washed notion  of  the  Greek  mind  which  young 
ladies  derived  from  sketching  a  plaster  cast  of  the 
ApoUo  Belvidere.^  He  saw  that  a  demonic  force, 
as  the  generation  of  Goethe  called  it,  underlay 
everything;  what  he  did  not  see  was  that  this  demonic 
force  was  under  control,  which  is  the  secret  of  the 

^I  was  about  to  say:  How  false  was  the  notion  of  Winkelmann 
about  the  grandeur  and  repose  of  the  Greek  spirit.  But  Winkelmann, 
if  his  sense  for  the  chained  monsters  in  the  Greek  soul  was  inadequate, 
was  at  least  in  real  sympathy  with  what  had  inspired  Greek  sculpture, 
love  and  knowledge  of  the  human  body  in  the  life,  made  gentle  by 
discipline  and  kept  strong  by  training.  For  that  reason  Winkelmann 
seems  hardly  a  German:  his  learning  was  deficient  and  his  heart  was 
humble.  He  did  not  patronise  the  ancients,  he  believed  in  them. 


THE  SUPERMAN 


141 


whole    matter.      The    point   had    been    thoroughly 
elucidated  by  Plato,  in  the  contrast  he  drew  between 
inspiration  and  art.     But  Plato  was  rather  ironical 
about  inspiration,  and  had  a  high  opinion  of  art; 
and   Nietzsche,   with   his    contrary  instinct,  rushes 
away  without  understanding  the  mind  of  the  master 
or  the  truth  of  the  situation.   He  thinks  he  alone  has 
discovered  the  divinity  of  Dionysus  and  of  the  Muses, 
which  Plato  took  as  a  matter  of  course  but  would  not 
venerate  superstitiously.    Inspiration,  like  will,  is  a 
force  without  which  reason  can  do  nothing.    Inspira- 
tion must  be  presupposed;    but  in  itself  it  can  do 
nothing  good  unless  it  is  in  harmony  with  reason,  or  is 
brought  into  harmony  with  it.  This  two-edged  wisdom 
that  makes  impulse  the  stuff  of  life  and  reason  its 
criterion,  is,  of  course,  lost  on  Nietzsche,  and  with  it 
the  whole  marvel  of  Greek  genius.    There  is  nothing 
exceptional  in  being  alive  and  impulsive ;  any  savage 
can  run  wild  and  be  frenzied  and  enact  histrionic 
passions :  the  virtue  of  the  Greeks  lay  in  the  exquisite 
firmness  with  which  they  banked  their  fires  without 
extinguishing    them,    so    that    their    life    remained 
human  (indeed,  remained  infra-human,  like  that  of 
Nietzsche's   superman)  and   yet   became   beautiful: 
they  were  severe  and  fond  of  maxims,  on  a  basis 
of  universal  tolerance;    they  governed  themselves 
rationally,  with  a  careful  freedom,  while  well  aware 


!' 


142    EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

that  nature  and  their  own  bosoms  were  full  of  gods, 
all  of  whom  must  be  reverenced. 

After  all,  this  defect  in  appreciation  is  inseparable 
from  the  transcendental  pose.  The  ancients,  like 
everything  else,  never  seem  to  the  egotist  a  reality 
co-ordinate  with  himself,  from  which  he  might  still 
have  something  to  learn.  They  are  only  so  much 
"  content  "  for  his  self-consciousness,  so  much  matter 
for  his  thought  to  transcend.  They  can  contain 
nothing  for  him  but  the  part  of  his  outgrown  self 
which  he  deigns  to  identify  with  them.  His  mind 
must  always  envelop  them  and  be  the  larger  thing. 
No  wonder  that  in  this  school  learning  is  wasted  for 
the  purposes  of  moral  education.  Whoever  has  seen 
the  learned  egotist  flies  at  his  approach.  History  in 
his  hands  is  a  demonstration  of  his  philosophy* 
Science  is  a  quarry  of  proofs  for  his  hobbies.  If  we 
do  not  agree  with  him  we  are  not  merely  mistaken 
(every  philosopher  tells  us  that),  but  we  are  false  to 
ourselves  and  ignorant  of  our  ideal  significance.  His 
ego  gives  us  our  place  in  the  world.  He  informs  us 
of  what  we  mean,  whatever  we  may  say;  and  he 
raises  our  opinions,  as  he  might  his  food,  to  a  higher 
unity  in  his  own  person.  He  is  priest  in  every  temple. 
He  approaches  a  picture-gallery  or  a  foreign  religion 
in  a  dictatorial  spirit,  with  his  a  priori  categories 
ready  on  his  lips;   pedantry  and  vanity  speak  in  his 


THE  SUPERMAN 


143 


every  gesture,  and  the  lesson  of  nothing  can  reach 
his  heart. 

No,  neither  the  philosophy  inherited  by  Nietzsche 
nor  his  wayward  imagination  was  fit  to  suggest  to 
him  a  nobler  race  of  men.  On  the  contrary,  they 
shut  him  off  from  comprehension  of  the  best  men 
that  have  existed.  Like  the  Utopias  or  ideals  of 
many  other  satirists  and  minor  philosophers,  the 
superman  is  not  a  possibility,  it  is  only  a  protest. 
Our  society  is  outworn,  but  hard  to  renew;  the 
emancipated  individual  needs  to  master  himself. 
In  what  spirit  or  to  what  end  he  will  do  so,  we  do 
not  know,  and  Nietzsche  cannot  tell  us.  He  is  the 
jester,  to  whom  all  incoherences  are  forgiven,  be- 
cause all  indiscretions  are  allowed.  His  mind  is 
undiscipUned,  and  his  tongue  outrageous,  but  he  is 
at  bottom  the  friend  of  our  conscience,  and  full  of 
shrewd  wit  and  tender  wisps  of  intuition.  Behind  his 
"gay  wisdom"  and  trivial  rhymes  lies  a  great 
anguish.  His  intellect  is  lost  in  a  chaos.  His  heart 
denies  itself  the  relief  of  tears  and  can  vent  itself 
only  in  forced  laughter  and  mock  hopes  that  gladden 
nobody,  least  of  all  himself. 


I 


I 


CHAPTER  XIV 


HEATHENISM 


Schopenhauer  somewhere  observes  that  the  word 
heathen,  no  longer  in  reputable  use  elsewhere,  had 
found  a  last  asylum  in  Oxford,  the  paradise  of  dead 
philosophies.  Even  Oxford,  I  believe,  has  now 
abandoned  it;  yet  it  is  a  good  word.  It  conveys,  as 
no  other  word  can,  the  sense  of  vast  multitudes 
tossing  in  darkness,  harassed  by  demons  of  their  own 
choice.  No  doubt  it  implies  also  a  certain  sanctimony 
in  the  superior  person  who  uses  it,  as  if  he  at  least 
were  not  chattering  in  the  general  Babel.  What 
justified  Jews,  Christians,  and  Moslems  (as  Mohammed 
in  particular  insisted)  in  feeling  this  superiority  was 
the  possession  of  a  Book,  a  chart  of  life,  as  it  were, 
in  which  the  most  important  features  of  history  and 
morals  were  mapped  out  for  the  guidance  of  teachable 
men.  The  heathen,  on  the  contrary,  were  abandoned 
to  their  own  devices,  and  even  prided  themselves 
on  following  only  their  spontaneous  will,  their  habit, 
presumption,  or  caprice. 

Most  unprejudiced  people  would  now  agree  that 
the  value  of  those  sacred  histories  and  rules  of  Ufe 
did  not  depend  on  their  alleged  miraculous  origin, 

144 


HEATHENISM 


HS 


but  rather  on  that  solidity  and  perspicacity  in  their 
authors  which  enabled  them  to  perceive  the  laws  of 
sweet  and  profitable  conduct  in  this  world.  It  was 
not  rehgion  merely  that  was  concerned,  at  least  not 
that  outlying,  private,  and  almost  negUgible  sphere 
to  which  we  often  apply  this  name;  it  was  the  whole 
fund  of  experience  mankind  had  gathered  by  living; 
it  was  wisdom.  Now,  to  record  these  lessons  of 
experience,  the  Greeks  and  Romans  also  had  their 
Books;  their  history,  poetry,  science,  and  civil  law. 
So  that  while  the  theologicaUy  heathen  may  be  those 
who  have  no  Bible,  the  moraUy  and  essentially 
heathen  are  those  who  possess  no  authoritative 
wisdom,  or  reject  the  authority  of  what  wisdom  they 
have;  the  untaught  or  unteachable  who  disdain  not 
only  revelation  but  what  revelation  stood  for  among 
early  peoples,  namely,  funded  experience. 

In  this  sense  the  Greeks  were  the  least  heathen 
of  men.  They  were  singularly  docile  to  political 
experiment,  to  law,  to  methodical  art,  to  the  proved 
limitations  and  resources  of  mortal  life.  This  life 
they  found  closely  hedged  about  by  sky,  earth,  and 
sea,  by  war,  madness,  and  conscience  with  their  in- 
dwelling deities,  by  oracles  and  local  genii  with  their 
accustomed  cults,  by  a  pervasive  fate,  and  the 
jealousy  of  invisible  gods.  Yet  they  saw  that  these 
divine  forces  were  constant,  and  that  they  exercised 


■SriVr 


HEATHENISM 


'II 


I 


I 


their  pressure  and  bounty  with  so  much  method 
that  a  prudent  art  and  religion  could  be  built  up  in 
their  midst.  All  this  was  simply  a  poetic  prologue 
to  science  and  the  arts;  it  largely  passed  into  them, 
and  would  have  passed  into  them  altogether  if  the 
naturalistic  genius  of  Greece  had  not  been  crossed 
in  Socrates  by  a  premature  discouragement,  and 
diverted  into  other  channels. 

Early  Hebraism  itself  had  hardly  been  so  wise. 
It  had  regarded  its  tribal  and  moral  interests  as 
absolute,  and  the  Creator  as  the  champion  and  om- 
nipotent agent  of  Israel.  But  this  arrogance  and 
inexperience  were  heathen.  Soon  the  ascendency 
of  Israel  over  nature  and  history  was  proclaimed 
to  be  conditional  on  their  fidelity  to  the  Law;  and 
as  the  spirit  of  the  nation  under  chastisement  became 
more  and  more  penitential,  it  was  absorbed  increas- 
ingly in  the  praise  of  wisdom.  Salvation  was  to 
come  only  by  repentance,  by  being  born  again  with 
a  will  wholly  transformed  and  broken;  so  that  the 
later  Jewish  religion  went  almost  as  far  as  Platonism 
or  Christianity  in  the  direction  opposite  to  heathenism. 

This  movement  in  the  direction  of  an  orthodox 
wisdom  was  regarded  as  a  progress  in  those  latter 
days  of  antiquity  when  it  occurred,  and  it  continued 
to  be  so  regarded  in  Christendom  until  the  rise  of 
romanticism.      The  most  radical  reformers  simply 


147 


urged  that  the  current  orthodoxy,  religious  or 
scientific,  was  itself  imperfectly  orthodox,  being 
corrupt,  overloaded,  too  vague,  or  too  narrow.  As 
every  actual  orthodoxy  is  avowedly  incomplete  and 
partly  ambiguous,  a  sympathetic  reform  of  it  is 
always  in  order.  Yet  very  often  the  reformers  are 
deceived.  What  really  offends  them  may  not  be 
what  is  false  in  the  received  orthodoxy,  but  what 
though  true  is  uncongenial  to  them.  In  that  case 
heathenism,  under  the  guise  of  a  search  for  a  purer 
wisdom,  is  working  in  their  souls  against  wisdom  of 
any  sort.  Such  is  the  suspicion  that  Catholics  would 
throw  on  Protestantism,  naturalists  on  idealism,  and 
conservatives  generally  on  all  revolutions. 

But  if  ever  heathenism  needed  to  pose  as  con- 
structive reform,  it  is  now  quite  willing  and  able 
to  throw  off  the  mask.  Desire  for  any  orthodox 
wisdom  at  all  may  be  repudiated;  it  may  be  set 
down  to  low  vitality  and  failure  of  nerve.  In  various 
directions  at  once  we  see  to-day  an  intense  hatred 
and  disbelief  gathering  head  against  the  very  notion 
of  a  cosmos  to  be  discovered,  or  a  stable  human 
nature  to  be  respected.  Nature,  we  are  told,  is  an 
artificial  symbol  employed  by  hfe;  truth  is  a  tempo- 
rary convention;  art  is  an  expression  of  personality; 
war  is  better  than  peace,  effort  than  achievement, 
and  feeling  than  intelligence;   change  is  deeper  than 


(1 


\ 


148   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


HEATHENISM 


149 


I 


form;  will  is  above  morality.  Expressions  of  this 
kind  are  sometimes  wanton  and  only  half  thought 
out;  but  they  go  very  deep  in  the  subjective  direction. 
Behind  them  all  is  a  sincere  revulsion  against  the 
difficult  and  confused  undertakings  of  reason ;  against 
science,  institutions,  and  moral  compulsions.  They 
mark  an  honest  retreat  into  immediate  experience 
and  animal  faith.  Man  used  to  be  called  a  rational 
animal,  but  his.  rationality  is  something  eventual  and 
ideal,  whereas  his  animality  is  actual  and  profound. 
Heathenism,  if  we  consider  life  at  large,  is  the  primal 
and  universal  religion. 

It  has  never  been  my  good  fortune  to  see  wild 
beasts  m  the  jungle,  but  I  have  sometimes  watched 
a  wild  bull  in  the  ring,  and  I  can  imagme  no  more 
striking,  simple,  and  heroic  example  of  animal  faith; 
especially  when  the  bull  is  what  is  technically  called 
noble,  that  is,  when  he  follows  the  lure  again  and 
again  with  eternal  singleness  of  thought,  eternal 
courage,  and  no  suspicion  of  a  hidden  agency  that 
is  mocking  him.  What  the  red  rag  is  to  this  brave 
creature,  their  passions,  inclinations,  and  chance 
notions  are  to  the  heathen.  What  they  will  they 
will;  and  they  would  deem  it  weakness  and  dis- 
loyalty to  ask  whether  it  is  worth  willing  or  whether 
it  is  attainable.  The  bull,  magnificently  sniffing  the 
air,  surveys  the  arena  with  the  cool  contempt  and 


disbelief  of  the  idealist,  as  if  he  said:  "You  seem, 
you  are  a  seeming;  I  do  not  quarrel  with  you,  I  do 
not  fear  you.  I  am  real,  you  are  nothing."  Then 
suddenly,  when  his  eye  is  caught  by  some  bright 
cloak  displayed  before  him,  his  whole  soul  changes. 
His  will  awakes  and  he  seems  to  say:  "  You  are  my 
destiny;  I  want  you,  I  hate  you,  you  shall  be  mine, 
you  shall  not  stand  in  my  path.  I  will  gore  you.  I 
will  disprove  you.  I  will  pass  beyond  you.  I  shall 
be,  you  shall  not  have  been."  Later,  when  sorely 
wounded  and  near  his  end,  he  grows  blind  to  all 
these  excitements.  He  smells  the  moist  earth,  and 
turns  to  the  dungeon  where  an  hour  ago  he  was  at 
peace.  He  remembers  the  herd,  the  pasture  beyond, 
and  he  dreams :  "  I  shall  not  die,  for  I  love  life.  I 
shall  be  young  again,  young  always,  for  I  love  youth. 
All  this  outcry  is  nought  to  me,  this  strange  suffering 
is  nought.  I  will  go  to  the  fields  again,  to  graze,  to 
roam,  to  love." 

So  exactly,  with  not  one  least  concession  to  the 
unsuspected  reality,  the  heathen  soul  stands  bravely 
before  a  painted  world,  covets  some  bauble,  and 
defies  death.  Heathenism  is  the  religion  of  will,  the 
faith  which  life  has  in  itself  because  it  is  life,  and  in 
its  aims  because  it  is  pursuing  them. 

In  their  tentative,  many-sided,  indomitable  way, 
the  Germans  have  been  groping  for  four  hundred 


ISO   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


't 


years  towards  a  restoration  of  their  primitive  heathen- 
ism. Germany  under  the  long  tutelage  of  Rome  had 
been  like  a  spirited  and  poetic  child  brought  up  by 
very  old  and  very  worldly  foster-parents.  For  many 
years  the  elfin  creature  may  drink  in  their  gossip 
and  their  maxims  with  simple  wonder;  but  at  last 
he  will  begin  to  be  restive  under  them,  ask  himself 
ominous  questions,  protest,  suffer,  and  finally  break 
into  open  rebellion.  Naturally  he  will  not  find  at 
first  theories  and  precepts  of  his  own  to  take  the 
place  of  his  whole  education;  he  will  do  what  he 
can  with  his  traditions,  revising,  interpreting,  and 
patching  them  with  new  ideas;  and  only  if  he  has 
great  earnestness  and  speculative  power  will  he  ever 
reach  an  unalloyed  expression  of  his  oppressed  soul. 
Now  in  Germany  speculative  power  and  earnest- 
ness existed  in  a  high  degree,  not,  of  course,  in  most 
people,  but  in  the  best  and  most  representative ;  and 
it  was  this  elite  that  made  the  Reformation,  and 
carried  it  on  into  historical  criticism  and  transcen- 
dental philosophy,  until  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
in  Schopenhauer,  Wagner,  and  Nietzsche,  the  last 
remnants  of  Christian  education  were  discarded  and 
the  spontaneous  heathen  morality  of  the  race  re- 
asserted itself  in  its  purity.  That  this  assertion  was 
not  consistent,  that  it  was  thrown  into  the  language 
and  images   of  some   alien  system,   is   not   to   be 


HEATHENISM 


151 


wondered  at;  but  the  Christianity  of  Parsifal,  like 
the  Buddhism  of  the  denial  of  the  will,  is  a  pure 
piece  of  romanticism,  an  exotic  setting  for  those 
vacillations  and  sinkings  which  absolute  Will  may 
very  well  be  subject  to  in  its  absolute  chaos. 

The  rebellion  of  the  heathen  soul  is  unmistakable 
in  the  Reformation,  but  it  is  not  recognised  in  this 
simple  form,  because  those  who  feel  that  it  was 
justified  do  not  dream  that  it  was  heathen,  and  those 
who  see  that  it  was  heathen  will  not  admit  that  it 
was  justified.  Externally,  of  course,  it  was  an  effort 
to  recover  the  original  essence  of  Christianity;  but 
why  should  a  free  and  absolute  being  care  for  that 
original  essence  when  he  has  discovered  it,  imless 
his  own  mind  demanded  that  very  thing?  And  if 
his  mind  demanded  it,  what  need  has  he  to  read 
that  demand  into  an  ancient  revelation  which,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  turned  on  quite  other  matters?  It 
was  simply  the  inertia  of  established  prejudice  that 
made  people  use  tradition  to  correct  tradition;  until 
the  whole  substance  of  tradition,  worn  away  by  that 
internal  friction,  should  be  dissolved,  and  impulse 
and  native  genius  should  assert  themselves  un- 
impeded. 

Judaism  and  Christianity,  like  Greek  philosophy, 
were  singly  inspired  by  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  in 
wliatever  form  it  might  be  really  attainable:    now 


I 


n 


152    EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

on  earth  if  possible,  or  in  the  millennium,  or  in  some 
abstracted  and  inward  life,  like  that  of  the  Stoics, 
or  in  the  last  resort,  in  a  different  life  altogether 
beyond  the  grave.  But  heathenism  ignores  happiness, 
despises  it,  or  thinks  it  impossible.  The  regimen  and 
philosophy  of  Germany  are  inspired  by  this  contempt 
for  happiness,  for  one's  own  happiness  as  well  as  for 
other  people's.  Happiness  seems  to  the  German 
moralists  something  unheroic,  an  abdication  before 
external  things,  a  victory  of  the  senses  over  the  will. 
They  think  the  pursuit  of  happiness  low,  materialistic, 
and  selfish.  They  wish  everybody  to  sacrifice  or 
rather  to  forget  happiness,  and  to  do  "  deeds." 

It  is  in  the  nature  of  things  that  those  who  are 
incapable  of  happiness  should  have  no  idea  of  it. 
Happiness  is  not  for  wild  animals,  who  can  only 
oscillate  between  apathy  and  passion.  To  be  happy, 
even  to  conceive  happiness,  you  must  be  reasonable 
or  (if  Nietzsche  prefers  the  word)  you  must  be  tamed. 
You  must  have  taken  the  measure  of  your  powers, 
tasted  the  fruits  of  your  passions  and  learned  your 
place  in  the  world  and  what  things  in  it  can  really 
serve  you.  To  be  happy  you  must  be  wise.  This 
happiness  is  sometimes  found  instinctively,  and  then 
the  rudest  fanatic  can  hardly  fail  to  see  how  lovely 
it  is;  but  sometimes  it  comes  of  having  learned  some- 
thing by  experience  (which  empirical  people  never 


HEATHENISM 


153 


do)  and  involves  some  chastening  and  renunciation; 
but  it  is  not  less  sweet  for  having  this  touch  of  holiness 
about  it,  and  the  spirit  of  it  is  healthy  and  beneficent. 
The  nature  of  happiness,  therefore,  dawns  upon  philo- 
sophers when  their  wisdom  begins  to  report  the  lessons 
of  experience:  an  a  priori  philosophy  can  have  no 
inkling  of  it. 

Happiness  is  the  union  of  vitality  with  art,  and 
in  so  far  as  vitality  is  a  spiritual  thing  and  not  mere 
restlessness  and  vehemence,  art  increases  vitality. 
It  obviates  friction,  waste,  and  despair.  Without 
art,  vitaUty  is  painful  and  big  with  monsters.  It  is 
hurried  easily  into  folly  and  crime;  it  ignores  the 
external  forces  and  interests  which  it  touches.  Ger- 
man philosophy  does  this  theoretically,  by  dethron- 
ing the  natural  world  and  caUing  it  an  idea  created 
by  the  ego  for  its  own  purposes;  and  it  does  this 
practically  also  by  obeying  the  categorical  imperative 
— ^no  longer  the  fabled  imperatives  of  Sinai  or  of 
Konigsberg,  but  the  inward  and  vital  imperative 
which  the  bull  obeys,  when  trusting  absolutely  in 
his  own  strength,  rage,  and  courage,  he  follows  a 
little  red  rag  and  his  destiny  this  way  and  that  way. 


I 


CHAPTER  XV 


GERMAN    GENIUS 


It  is  customary  to  judge  religions  and  philosophies 
by  their  truth,  which  is  seldom  their  strong  point; 
yet  the  application  of  that  unsympathetic  criterion 
is  not  unjust,  since  they  aspire  to  be  true,  maintain 
that  they  are  so,  and  forbid  any  opposed  view,  no 
matter  how  obvious  and  inevitable,  to  be  called  true 
in  their  stead.  But  when  religions  and  philosophies 
are  dead,  or  when  we  are  so  removed  from  them  by 
time  or  training  that  the  question  of  their  truth  is 
not  a  living  question  for  us,  they  do  not  on  that 
account  lose  all  their  interest;  then,  in  fact,  for  the 
first  time  they  manifest  their  virtues  to  the  un- 
believer. He  sees  that  they  are  expressions  of  human 
genius;  that  however  false  to  their  subject-matter 
they  may  be,  like  the  conventions  of  art  they  are 
true  to  the  eye  and  to  the  spirit  that  fashioned  them. 
And  as  nothing  in  the  world,  not  even  the  truth,  is 
so  interesting  as  human  genius,  these  incredible  or 
obsolete  religions  and  philosophies  become  delightful 
to  us.  The  sting  is  gone  out  of  their  errors,  which  no 
longer  threaten  to  delude  us,  and  they  have  acquired 
a  beauty  invisible  to  the  eye  of  their  authors,  because 

'54 


1 
^ 


i 


GERMAN  GENIUS 


iSS 


of  the  very  refraction  which  the  truth  suffered  in 
that  vital  medium. 

German  philosophy  is  a  work  of  genius.  To  be 
heathen  is  easy;  to  have  an  absolute  will  and  a 
belief  in  chaos — or  rather  a  blind  battle  with  chance 
— ^is  probably  the  lot  of  most  animals;  but  to  be 
condemned  to  be  learned,  industrious,  moral,  and 
Christian,  and  yet,  through  that  veil  of  unavoidable 
phenomena  and  conventions,  to  pierce  to  absolute 
will  and  freedom,  and  to  set  them  forth  persuasively 
as  the  true  reality,  in  spite  of  all  the  ordered  appear- 
ances which  do  not  cease  to  confront  and  to  occupy 
us — that  is  a  work  of  genius.  It  is  a  wonderful 
achievement,  to  have  recovered  atavistically  the 
depths  of  the  primitive  soul,  in  the  midst  of  its  later 
sophistication.  In  this  philosophy  the  ancestral  ego, 
the  soul  perplexed  and  incredulous  at  being  bom 
into  this  world,  returns  to  haunt  us  in  broad  day- 
light and  to  persuade  us  with  its  ghostly  eloquence 
that  not  that  ego  but  this  world  is  the  ghost. 

The  egotism  which  in  German  philosophy  is  justi- 
fied by  a  theory  in  German  genius  is  a  form  of  ex- 
perience. It  turns  everything  it  touches  into  a  part 
of  its  own  Ufe,  personal,  spontaneous,  sincere,  original. 
It  is  young  and  self-sufficient;  yet  as  a  continual 
change  of  view  is  incompatible  with  art  and  learn- 
ing, we  see  in  Germany,  even  more  than  elsewhere. 


w 


I 


s 


156   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

a  division  of  labour  between  genius  and  tradition; 
nowhere  are  the  types  of  the  young  rebel  and  the 
tireless  pedant  so  common  and  so  extreme. 

The  notion  that  something  that  moves  and  lives^ 
as  genius  does,  can  at  the  same  time  be  absolute  has 
some  interesting  impUcations,  Such  a  genius  and  all 
its  works  must  be  unstable.  As  it  has  no  external 
sources  and  no  external  objects,  as  its  own  past  can 
exercise  no  control  over  it  (for  that  would  be  the 
most  lifeless  of  tyrannies),  it  is  a  sort  of  shooting 
star,  with  no  guarantees  for  the  future.  This,  for  the 
complete  egotist,  has  no  terrors.  A  tragic  end  and 
a  multitude  of  enemies  may  seem  good  to  the  absolute 
hero  and  necessary  to  his  perfect  heroism.  In  the 
same  way,  to  be  without  a  subject-matter  or  an 
audience  may  seem  good  to  the  absolute  poet,  who 
sings  to  himself  as  he  goes,  exclusively  for  the  benefit 
of  that  glorious  and  fleeting  moment.  Genius  could 
not  be  purer  than  that:  although  perhaps  it  might 
be  hard  to  prove  that  it  was  genius. 

A  kindred  implication,  which  perhaps  might  be 
less  welcome  to  the  egotist  himself,  is  that  an  absolute 
genius  is  formless,  and  that  the  absolute  freedom 
with  which  it  thinks  it  takes  on  now  this  form  and 
now  that,  is  not  really  freedom  at  all,  but  subjection 
to  unknown  and  perhaps  ironical  forces.  Absolute 
Will,  of  which  a  perfectly  free  genius  is  an  expression. 


It 


GERMAN  GENIUS 


^^1 


cannot  say  specifically  what  it  craves,  for  essentially 
it  should  crave  everything  indiscriminately.  In 
practice,  however,  it  must  seem  to  aim  at  this  or 
that  precise  result.  These  specific  aims  are  suggested 
to  it  by  circumstances,  foisted  upon  it  in  its  replete 
innocence;  for  it  is  all  expectation,  all  vague  hearti- 
ness and  zeal  for  it  knows  not  what.  The  logic  it 
proclaims  at  any  time  and  calls  eternal  is  but  the 
fashionable  rhetoric  of  that  hour.  Absolute  Will 
is  a  great  dupe  on  whom  fortune  forces  card  after 
card.  Like  Faust  it  is  helpless  before  the  most  vulgar 
temptations.  Why  should  it  not  fulfil  itself  now  by 
the  pursuit  of  magic,  now  by  the  seduction  of  a 
young  girl,  now  by  an  archaeological  pose,  now  by  a 
piratical  or  an  engineering  enterprise?  True,  there 
are  Umits  to  its  gullibility;  there  are  suggestions 
from  which  it  recoils.  The  German  ego,  after  swallow- 
ing Christianity  whole,  will  in  Luther  stick  at  In- 
dulgences. Faust  sometimes  turns  on  Mephistopheles, 
as  the  worm  will  turn:  he  says  that  he  covets  all 
experience,  but  in  that  he  does  himself  a  great 
injustice;  there  are  experiences  he  scorns.  After  all 
this  ego  is  not  really  absolute;  it  is  specifically  and 
pathetically  human  and  directed  upon  a  few  natural 
ends.  That  is  what  saves  it;  for  a  mind  can  have  no 
distinction  and  a  soul  no  honour  if  its  only  maxim 
is  to  Uve  on.    It  may  take  up  with  enthusiasm  what- 


iS8    EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 

ever  it  takes  up,  but  it  will  take  up  anything;  and 
it  may  do  mightily  whatever  it  does,  but  it  will  not 
do  it  long. 

Consider,  in  this  respect,  the  pathetic  history  of 
the  German  people.  It  conquered  the  Roman  empire 
and  it  became  Roman,  or  wished  to  become  so.  It 
had  had  a  mythology  and  a  morality  of  its  own  (very 
like  in  principle  to  those  it  has  since  rediscovered), 
yet  it  accepted  Christianity  with  the  docility  of  a 
child.  It  began  to  feel,  after  some  centuries,  how 
alien  to  its  genius  this  religion  was,  but  it  could  find 
relief  only  in  a  fresh  draught  from  the  same  foreign 
sources,  or  others  more  remote.  To  cease  to  be 
Roman  it  tried  to  become  Hebraic  and  Greek.  In 
studying  these  models,  however,  it  came  upon  a  new 
scent.  What  passed  for  revelation  or  for  classical 
perfection  was  of  human  national  growth,  stratified 
like  the  rocks,  and  not  divine  or  authoritative  at  all. 
If  you  only  made  hypotheses  enough,  you  could 
prove  how  it  all  arose  according  to  necessary  laws, 
logical,  psychological,  historical,  economical,  and 
aesthetical.  Above  all,  you  could  prove  how  nobody 
had  understood  anything  properly  before,  and  how 
the  key  to  it  all  was  in  your  single  hand. 

Yet  the  triumphs  of  theory  alone  soon  seemed 
unsatisfying.  Wine,  science,  and  song  once  seemed 
to  make  Germany  happy,  but  if  a  prince  imposed 


GERMAN  GENIUS 


159 


military  discipline,  might  not  that  be  an  even  better 
thing?  For  a  time  wistfulness,  longing,  and  the 
feeling  of  Titanic  loneliness  and  of  a  world  to  be 
evoked  and  snuffed  out  like  a  dream,  seemed  to  fill 
the  cup  of  intense  living,  and  the  greatest  and  happiest 
of  Germans  could  cry — 

Nur  wer  die  SehnsucM  kennt 
weiss,  was  ich  hide, 
allein  und  abgetrennt 
von  oiler  Freude, 

But  presently  true  intensity  of  life  appeared  to  lie 
rather  in  being  a  victorious  general,  or  an  ironmaster, 
or  a  commercial  traveller,  or  a  reveller  in  the  Friedrich- 
strasse,  or  a  spy  and  conspirator  anywhere  in  the  world. 
All  these  turbid  and  nondescript  ambitions  are  in 
a  sense  artificial;  the  Germans  accept  them  now  as 
a  thousand  years  ago  they  accepted  Christianity, 
because  such  things  are  suddenly  thrust  upon  them. 
By  nature  they  are  simple,  honest,  kindly,  easily 
pleased.  There  is  no  latent  irony  or  disbelief  in  their 
souls.  The  pleasures  of  sense,  plain  and  copious, 
they  enjoy  hugely,  long  labour  does  not  exasperate 
them,  science  fills  them  with  satisfaction,  music 
entrances  them.  There  ought  to  be  no  happier  or 
more  innocent  nation  in  this  world.  Unfortunately 
their  very  goodness  and  simplicity  render  them  help- 
less; they  are  what  they  are  dragooned  to  be.  There 
is  no  social  or  intellectual  disease  to  which,  in  spots. 


i6o   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


GERMAN  GENIUS 


i6i 


II 


they  do  not  succumb,  as  to  an  epidemic :  their  philo- 
sophy itself  is  an  example  of  this.    They  have  the 
defects  of  the  newly  prosperous;    they  are  far  too 
proud  of  their  possessions,  esteeming  them  for  being 
theirs,  without  knowing  whether  they  are  good  of 
their  kind.    Culture  is  a  thing  seldom  mentioned  by 
those  who  have  it.  The  real  strength  of  the  Germans 
lies  not  in  those  external  achievements  of  which  at  this 
moment  they  make  so  much— for  they  may  outgrow 
this  new  materialism  of  theirs— it  lies  rather  in  what 
they  have  always  prized,  their  Gemiith  and  their  music. 
Perhaps  these  two  things  have  a  common  root. 
Emotion  is  inarticulate,  yet  there  is  a  mighty  move- 
ment in  it,  and  a  great  complexity  of  transitions  and 
shades.    This  intrinsic  movement  of  the  feelings  is 
ordinarily  little  noticed  because  people  are  too  wide 
awake,  or  too  imaginative.   Everything  is  a  fact  or  a 
picture  to  them,  and  their  emotions  seem  to  them 
little  but  obvious  quahties  of  things.    They  roundly 
call  things  beautiful,   painful,  holy,   or   ridiculous; 
they  do  not  speak  of  their  Gemuth,  although,  of 
course,  it  is  by  virtue  of  their  emotions  that  they 
pass  such  judgments.   But  when  the  occasions  of  our 
emotions,  the  objects  that  call  them  forth,  are  not  so 
instantly  focussed,  when  we  know  better  what  we 
feel  than  why  we  feel  it,  then  we  seem  to  have  a 
richer  and  more  massive  sensibility.     Our  feelings 


absorb  our  attention  because  they  remain  a  thmg 
apart :  they  seem  to  us  wonderfully  deep  because  we 
do  not  ground  them  in  things  external. 

Now  music  is  a  means  of  giving  form  to  our  inner 
feelings  without  attaching  them  to  events  or  objects 
in  the  world.    Music  is  articulate,  but  articulate  in 
a  language  which  avoids,  or  at  least  veils  the  articu- 
lation of  the  world  we  Hve  in;   it  is,  therefore,  the 
chosen  art  of  a  mind  to  whom  the  world  is  still 
foreign.    If  this  seems  in  one  way  an  incapacity,  it  is 
also  a  privilege.    Not  to  be  at  home  in  the  world, 
to  prize  it  chiefly  for  echoes  which  it  may  have  in 
the  soul,  to  have  a  soul  that  can  give  forth  echoes, 
or  that  can  generate  internal  dramas  of  sound  out 
of  its  own  resources — ^may  this  not  be  a  more  enviable 
endowment  than  that  of  a  mind  all  surface,  a  sensitive 
plate  only  able  to  photograph  this  not  too  beautiful 
earth  ?    In  any  case,  for  better  or  for  worse,  inward 
sensibility,  unabsorbed  in  worldly  affairs,  exists  in 
some  people;  a  life,  as  it  were,  still  in  the  womb  and 
not  yet  in  contact  with  the  air.  But  let  these  inspired 
musicians,    masters    in-  their   own   infinite    realms, 
beware  of  the  touch  of  matter.    Let  them  not  com- 
pose a  system  of  the  universe  out  of  their  Gemuth, 
as  they  might  a  symphony.  Let  them  not  raise  their 
baton  in  the  face  of  the  stars  or  of  the  nations,  and 
think  to  lead  them  like  an  orchestra. 


i: 


CHAPTER  XVI 


EGOTISM   IN   PRACTICE 


Theories  in  their  own  ethereal  essence  can  have  no 

influence  on  events.    But  the  men  who  conceive  and 

adopt  a  theory  form,  in  doing  so,  certain  habits  of 

discrimination  and  of  reaction  to  things.     In  fact^ 

they    have    conceived    and    adopted    their    theory 

because   their   habits   of  apprehension   and   action 

suggested  it  to  them,  or  could  be  brought  to  suggest 

it:  the  e3q)Kcit  theory  is  a  symbol  and  omen  of  their 

practical  attitude,  of  their  way,  as  the  phrase  has  it^ 

of  grasping  the  situation. 

All  philosophies  have  the  common  property  of 

being  speculative,  and,  therefore,  their  immediate 

influence  on  those  who  hold  them  is  in  many  ways 

alike,  however  opposed  the  theories  may  be  to  one 

another:   they  all  make  people  theoretical.    In  this 

sense  any  philosophy,  if  warmly  embraced,  has  a 

moralising  force,  because,  even  if  it  belittles  morality, 

it  absorbs  the  mind  in  intellectual  contemplation^ 

accustoms  it  to  wide  and  reasoned  comparisons,  and 

makes  the  sorry  escapades  of  human  nature  from 

convention  seem  even  more  ignominious  than  its 

ruUng  prejudices. 

The  particular  theory  of  egotism  arises  from  an 

i6a 


EGOTISM  IN  PRACTICE 


163 


exorbitant  interest  in  ourselves,  in  the  medium  of 
thought  and  action  rather  than  in  its  objects.  It  is 
not  necessarily  incorrect,  because  the  self  is  actual 
and  indispensable;  but  the  insistence  on  it  is  a  little 
abnormal,  because  the  self,  like  consciousness,  ought 
to  be  diaphanous.  Egotism  in  philosophy  is,  there- 
fore, a  pretty  sure  symptom  of  excessive  pedantry 
and  inordinate  self-assertion. 

In  the  lofty  theory  of  egotism  life  is  represented 
as  a  sort  of  game  of  patience,  in  which  the  rules,  the 
cards,  the  table,  and  the  empty  time  on  our  hands, 
all  are  mere  images  created  by  the  fancy,  as  in  a 
dream.  The  sense  of  being  occupied,  though  one 
really  has  nothing  to  do,  will  then  be  the  secret  of 
the  whole  affair,  and  the  sole  good  to  be  attained 
by  living.  Of  course  this  fantastic  theory  is  put 
forward  only  on  great  occasions,  when  an  extreme 
profundity  is  in  place;  but  like  other  esoteric  doc- 
trines it  expresses  very  well  the  spirit  in  which  those 
people  live  habitually  who  would  appeal  to  it  in  the 
last  resort.  Obviously  such  an  egotist  should  in 
consistency  be  a  man  of  principle.  He  would  feel  it 
to  be  derogatory  to  his  dignity,  and  contrary  to  his 
settled  purpose,  to  cheat  at  the  game  he  has  instituted. 
That  luck  should  sometimes  go  against  him  is  pre- 
ordained by  himself;  otherwise  the  game  would 
have  no  zest,  and  to  be  interested,  to  be  pressed. 


i64   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


EGOTISM  IN  PRACTICE 


165 


i 


m 


even  to  be  annoyed  seems  the  highest  good  to  him 
in  his  great  tedium.  He  will,  therefore,  be  assiduous, 
patient,  and  law-abiding;  and  the  idea  of  ever 
abandoning  his  chosen  game  for  anything  less  forced 
and  less  arbitrary  will  seem  to  him  disloyalty  to 
himself,  and  a  great  wickedness. 

Indeed,  nothing  beside  his  own  purpose  will  have 
any  value  in  his  eyes,  or  even  any  existence.  He  will 
therefore  inevitably  act  without  consideration  for 
others,  without  courtesy,  without  understanding. 
When  he  chooses  to  observe  anything  external — and 
he  is  studious — ^his  very  attentions  will  be  an  insult; 
for  he  will  assume  that  his  idea  of  that  external  thing 
is  the  reaUty  of  it,  and  that  other  people  can  have 
only  such  rights  and  only  such  a  character  as  he  is 
willing  to  assign  to  them.  It  follows  from  his  egotistical 
principles  that  in  judging  others  he  should  be  officious 
and  rude,  learned  and  mistaken. 

What  the  egotist  calls  his  will  and  his  ideals  are, 
taken  together,  simply  his  passions ;  but  the  passions 
of  the  egotist  are  turned  into  a  system  and  go  un- 
rebuked.  A  man  who  lowers  his  precepts  to  the  level 
of  his  will  may  the  more  easily  raise  his  practice  to 
the  level  of  his  precepts.  He  endows  his  life  with  a 
certain  coherence,  momentum,  and  integrity,  just 
because  he  has  suppressed  all  vain  aspiration  and  all 
useless  shame.    He  does  not  call  himself  a  sinner; 


he  would  be  at  a  loss  for  a  reason  to  think  himself 
one;  for  really  his  standard  of  virtue  expresses 
nothing  but  his  prevalent  will.  Is  it  not  intelligible 
that  such  a  morality  should  be  more  efficacious, 
more  unifying,  heavier,  and  more  convinced  than 
one  which  begins  by  condemning  our  natural  passions 
and  the  habitual  course  of  human  life  ? 

In  fact,  egotism  in  practice  is  a  solemn  and  arduous 
business;  there  is  nothing  malicious  about  it  and. 
nothing  gay.  There  is  rather  a  stolid  surprise  that 
such  honest  sentiments  and  so  much  enterprise 
should  not  meet  everywhere  with  applause.  If  other 
people  are  put  thereby  at  a  disadvantage,  why  should 
they  not  learn  their  lesson  and  adopt  in  their  turn 
the  methods  of  the  superman  ?  If  they  are  touched 
by  the  vanity  and  the  charm  of  existence  and  neglect 
the  intense  pursuit  of  their  absolute  will,  why  do 
they  complain  if  they  are  jostled  and  beaten  ?  Only 
he  deserves  Ufe  and  freedom,  said  Goethe,  who  is 
forced  daily  to  win  them  afresh. 

If  the  egotist  suffers  passion  to  speak  in  his  philo- 
sophy, it  is  perhaps  because  he  has  so  Uttle  passion. 
Men  of  frank  passions  quickly  see  the  folly  of  them; 
but  the  passions  of  the  egotist  are  muffled,  dull,  Uke 
the  miserly  passions  of  old  men;  they  are  diffused 
into  sensuaUty  and  sentiment,  or  hardened  into 
maxims.   Egotistical  lovers  can  hold  hands  for  hours 


\^ 


166   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


I 


and  chastely  kiss  each  other  for  years;  such  tokens 
of  afiPection  help  to  keep  them  in  love  and  at  the 
same  time  are  a  sop  to  more  troublesome  impulses. 
Sentimentality  and  gush  mark  the  absence  of  passion : 
the  blood  has  been  diluted  to  lymph.  Hence  the 
egotist  can  the  more  easily  mistake  his  passions  for 
duties,  and  his  cupidities  for  ideals.  His  devotion  to 
these  ideals  is  pure  and  enthusiastic;  but  in  serving 
them  he  fattens  steadily,  as  punctual  at  his  work  as 
at  his  meals,  as  dutifully  moved  by  the  approved 
music  as  by  the  official  patriotism,  vicious  when  it 
seems  manly  to  be  vicious,  brutal  when  it  seems 
politic  to  be  brutal;  he  feels  he  is  impeccable,  and 
he  must  die  in  his  sins.  Nothing  can  ruffle  the  autono- 
mous conscience  of  this  kind  of  idealist,  whose  nature 
may  be  gross,  but  whose  life  is  busy  and  conventional, 
and  who  loudly  congratulates  himself  daily  on  all  he 
knows  and  does. 

Turn  the  circumstances  about  as  you  like,  the 
egotist  finds  only  one  ultimate  reason  for  everything. 
It  is  not  a  reason;  it  is  absolute  will.  Suppose  we 
asked  the  ego,  in  the  Fichtean  system,  why  it  posited 
a  material  world  to  be  its  implacable  enemy  and 
rebellious  toy,  and  why  without  necessity  it  raised 
this  infinity  of  trouble  for  itself  and  for  the  unhappy 
world  which  it  created  by  its  fiat.  It  could  only 
reply:   "  Because  §uch  is  the  categorical  imperative 


EGOTISM  IN  PRACTICE 


167 


within  me;  because  so  I  will,  so  I  must,  and  so  my 
absolute  duty  and  its  logic  require.  If  the  conse- 
quences are  tragic — ^and  in  the  end  I  know  they  must 
be  tragic — that  only  proves  the  sublime  unselfishness 
of  my  egotism,  the  purity  of  my  sacred  folly,  the 
ideality  of  my  groundless  will.  All  reasons,  all  justi- 
fications which  might  appeal  to  me  must  be  posterior 
to  my  will;  my  will  itself  can  have  no  justification 
and  no  reason." 

Let  us  admire  the  sincerity  of  this  searching  con- 
fession. Virtue  itself,  if  it  relied  on  self-consciousness 
for  its  philosophy,  could  not  justify  itself  on  other 
grounds.  If  the  difference  between  virtue  and  vice  is 
hereby  obliterated,  that  only  proves  that  the  differ- 
ence is  not  founded  on  self-consciousness  but  on  the 
circumstances  and  powers  under  which  we  live.  What 
self-consciousness  can  disclose  is  not  the  basis  of 
anything.  All  will  is  the  expression  of  some  animal 
body,  frail  and  mortal,  but  teachable  and  rich  in 
resource.  The  environment  in  which  this  will  finds 
itself  controls  and  rewards  its  various  movements, 
and  establishes  within  it  the  difference  between  virtue 
and  vice,  wisdom  and  folly. 

The  whole  transcendental  philosophy,  if  made 
ultimate,  is  false,  and  nothing  but  a  private  per- 
spective. The  will  is  absolute  neither  in  the  indi- 
vidual nor  in  humanity.    Nature  i%not  a  product  of 


i68   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


_,t>. 
t 


^i    I: 


fi* 


' 
'{ 


the  mind,  but  on  the  contrary  there  is  an  external 
world,  ages  prior  to  any  idea  of  it,  which  the  mind 
recognises  and  feeds  upon.  There  is  a  steady  human 
nature  within  us,  which  our  moods  and  passions  may 
wrong  but  cannot  annul.  There  is  no  categorical 
imperative  but  only  the  operation  of  instincts  and 
interests  more  or  less  subject  to  discipline  and  mutual 
adjustment.  Our  whole  life  is  a  compromise,  an 
incipient  loose  harmony  between  the  passions  of  the 
soul  and  the  forces  of  nature,  forces  which  likewise 
generate  and  protect  the  souls  of  other  creatures, 
endowing  them  with  powers  of  expression  and  self- 
assertion  comparable  with  our  own,  and  with  aims 
BO  less  sweet  and  worthy  in  their  own  eyes ;  so  that 
the  quick  and  honest  mind  cannot  but  practise 
courtesy  in  the  universe,  exercising  its  will  without 
vehemence  or  forced  assurance,  judging  with  serenity, 
and  in  everything  discarding  the  word  absolute  as 
the  most  false  and  the  most  odious  of  words.  As 
Montaigne  observes,  "He  who  sets  before  him,  as 
in  a  picture,  this  vast  image  of  our  mother  Nature 
in  her  entire  majesty;  who  reads  in  her  aspect 
such  universal  and  continual  variety;  who  discerns 
himself  therein,  and  not  himself  only  but  a  whole 
kingdom,  to  be  but  a  most  delicate  dot — ^he  alone 
esteems  things  according  to  the  just  measure  of  their 
greatness." 


INDEX 


Alexander  the  Great,  a  model 
for  German  idealists,  80,  81 
Aristotle,  120,  124 

Belief  in  God,   disproved  prag- 
matically, 134 
Bull-psychology,  148,  IS3 
Burckhardt,  47 
Byron,  48,  49 

Caesar  Borgia,  a  superman,  1 38 

Calvinism,  in  Kant,  57;  in  Fichte, 
25,  771  in  Hegel,  iii        . 

Categorical  imperative,  its  ongm, 
56;  its  prerogatives,  62; 
its  dangers,  63 

Chancellor,  the  German,  his 
chivalrous  after  -  thought 
about  Belgium,  50 

Christianity,  foreign  to  Germany, 
1 1 ;  undermined  by  German 
philosophy,  104,  105;  patron- 
ised by  Goethe,  46;  aban- 
doned by  romantic  indi- 
vidualists, 10^  denounced 
by  Nietzsche~30-i32:  has 
one  element  in  common  with 
egotism,  106 

Classicism,  romantic  in  Goethe, 
46;  missed  by  Nietzsche, 
139-142;    when  truly  vital, 

48 

Conquest,  a  sublime  duty,  80,  81 

Contraries,  alleged  to  be  in- 
separable, 89,  90 

Criticism,  historical,  has  a  tran- 
scendental basis,  29 

Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  its 
agnosticism,  14;  its  so- 
.  phistical  foundation,  20 


Durer,  27 

Egotism,     defined,     6;      distin- 
guished from  selfishness,  95- 
97,  100-102,  118;    based  on 
error,   167;    implicit  in  the 
Kantian  imperative  and  pos- 
tulates, 62-64;  implies  integ- 
rity, force,  self-complacency, 
163-166;  is  odious  in  pedants, 
142 
Emerson,  24,  49;  quoted,  119 
England,  judged  by  Fichte,  76 
Evil,  justified,  123,  132-134 

Faith,  German  conception  of  it, 
13.  27;  corroborated  only 
by  itself,  31,  68 

Faust,  typical  egotist,  13,  14; 
prefigures  the  evolution  of 
Germany,  50,  51.  ^S7'»  im- 
proves on  Saint  John,  52 

Fichte,  65-83 

GemHth.  why  self-conscious,  160 
German  ethics,  its  faults,  103 
German  language,  its  merits,  75 
German  nation,   its  purity,   75; 
its  mission,  78,  79:   in  what 
sense  the  chosen  people,  73. 
74;    necessary  to  the  con- 
tinued existence  of  God,  68; 
and  of  history,  79;    its  for- 
tunes, 158-160 
German  philosophy,  not  all  philo# 
sophy     in     Germany,      11; 
primitive,    27;     subjective, 
12;  in  what  senses  idealistic, 
1 5 ;  in  what  sense  not  so,  16; 
I         ambiguous,  17,  18;  a  reveU- 


169 


INDEX 


171 


170   EGOTISM  IN  GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY 


tion.  23;    must  continually 

be  proved  afresh.  26;    is  a 

work  of  genius,  155 
Gobineau,  yj 

Goethe,  43-53;  quoted.  159,  165 
Good  and  evil  above  right  and 

wrong.  124 
Gospel,  amended  by  Faust.  52; 

glossed  by  Hegelians.  105 

Happiness,  not  for  the  egotist, 

14,  15;  he  despises  it.  152; 
not  abstract  nor  absolute, 
no.  in;  attainable,  118; 
its  nature.  152.  155 

Heathenism,  use  of  the  word. 
144;  contrast  with  paganism. 
145.  146;    its  modem  form. 

147.  148 
Hegel.  84-98 
Human  nature.  1x7.  118 

Idealism,  meanings  of  the  word. 

15.  16;  fosters  practical 
materialism.  5.  69-72.  78.  81, 
83;  should  be  imposed  on 
the  young.  80;  its  mystical 
issue.  38-40 

Ideals,  when  captious,  when  solid. 

,       137 

Infinity,  evaded  by  Hegel.  88,  89; 
recognised  again  by  Scho- 
penhauer. 108,  109 

Kant.  54-64;  25.  34.  35.  43 
Knowledge,  assumed  to  be  im- 
possible.   15;    abuse  of  the 
term,  39,  60 

I^eibniz,  anticipates  transcen- 
dentalism. 33;  his  insidious 
theology.  104 

Lessing.  on  truth,  129 

Locke,  sets  the  ball  rolling.  32 

Luther,  135.  157 


Max  Stimer.  99-103;   quoted,  73 
Montaigne,  quoted,  168 
Music.  16.  i6x 
Musset.  49 

Mysticism,  in  knowledge,  38-40; 
in  morals.  123 

Nietzsche.  1 14-143 

Optimism,    egotistical,    25,    in, 
114,  116,  118,  119 

Passion,  not  naturally  egotistical. 

xoi ;  may  become  so.  95,  98; 

dull  in  egotists.  165.  166 
Paulsen.  42 
Perception,  terminates  in  things 

not  in  ideas,  19 
Pessimism,  inherits  disregard  of 

intrinsic  values,  109;   reacts 

against  optimism,   25,    in; 

is  arbitrary,  1 16 
Pier  G3mt,  typical  egotist,  13,  14 
Plato,    his    idealism    contrasted 

with  the  German,    16;    his 

oppressive  politics,   81;    on 

inspiration,  141 
Postulates   of   practical   reason, 

equivocal,  58-64 
Power,   divep  meanings  of  the 

word,  125-127 
Preservation,  no  law  of  nature. 

Progress,  when  illusory,  17;  when 

real.  112 
Protestantism.  31-31,  151 

Religion  in  German  philosophy, 

7.  13.  75.  76.  82.  83 
Rome  and  German  genius.  1 50 

Schopenhauer.  108-122 
Selfishness,    distinguished    from 
egotism,  95,  97,  100-103,  118 


k 


its 


Society,  its  alleged  consciousness, 
17.  18;  a**  spook."  99 

Socrates.  146 

Spinoza,  religious  feeling  trans- 
ferred to  nature.  24;  his 
mysticism  in  ethics,  123 

Spirit,    its    meanings,    37; 
mystic  unity,  38 

State,  the  absolute,  an  idol,  96- 

98 

Substance,  egotistical  use  of  the 

term,  17,  92 
Superman.  136-143 

Tender  minds,  how  attracted  to 

German  philosophy.  24 
Transcendentalism,  32-42 
Truth,  a  figment  of  the  will,  28; 
made  in  Germany,  88;    less 


valuable  than  illusion,  14, 
128-130;  not  the  strong 
point  of  philosophies.  1 54 

Understanding,  hostility  of  Hegel 
to  the,  90,  91 

Wagner,  136,  150 

War,  a  boon,  96;  how  it  should 
be  started.  79;  is  to  rage  for 
two  hundred  years.  115 

Wilhelm  Meister,  44 

Will,  used  metaphorically.  36, 
1 14;  should  be  disinterested, 
67  \  may  be  fulfilled  in  de- 
feat, 66,  67;  is  unstable 
and  indeterminate,  156-158; 
may  be  denied,  119,  120 

Winkelmann,  140,  note 


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